UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


6  971 


STEAMBOAT   TIME 


LIFE   ON  THE  MISSISSIPPI 


BY 

MARK  TWAIN 


HARPER    &    BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 

NEW    YORK    AND     LONDON 
O  *  ~   \  -J 

3  ±  J  1 & 


Life  on  the  Mississippi 

Copyright,  1874,  and  1875,  by  H.  O.  HOUGHTON  &  COMPANT 

Copyright,  1883,  1889,  1903,  by  SAMUEL  L.  CLKMENB 

Copyright,  1911.  1917,  by  CLARA  GABBILOWITSCH 

Printed  in  the  United    States  of  America 

<    fs.L.  CLEMENS,  J    g 
f    \    MARK  TWAIN.   /   2* 

[TRADE  MARK.] 


35°) 
C  53 
/  9/7 

.\ 
CONTENDS 

CHAP.  PACW 

THE  "BODY  OF  THE  NATION"        xv 

I.  THE  RIVER  AND  ITS  HISTORY i 

II.  THE  RIVER  AND  ITS  EXPLORERS 10 

III.  FRESCOES  FROM  THE  PAST 17 

IV.  THE  BOYS'  AMBITION 32 

V.  I  WANT  TO  BE  A  CUB-PILOT 38 

VI.  A  CUB-PILOT'S  EXPERIENCE  .    .     . 44 

VII.  A  DARING  DEED 54 

VIII.  PERPLEXING  LESSONS 63 

IX.  CONTINUED  PERPLEXITIES 72 

X.  COMPLETING  MY  EDUCATION 81 

XI.  THE  RIVER  RISES 89 

XII.  SOUNDING 98 

XIII.  A  PILOT'S  NEEDS 107 

XIV.  RANK  AND  DIGNITY  OF  PILOTING 118 

XV.  'THE  PILOTS'  MONOPOLY !    .    .     .    .  127" 

XVI.  RACING  DAYS       143 

XVII.  CUT-OFFS  AND  STEPHEN 153 

XVIII.  I  TAKE  A  FEW  EXTRA  LESSONS 163 

XIX.  BROWN  AND  I  EXCHANGE  COMPLIMENTS     .    .    .    .  171 

XX.  A  CATASTROPHE 177 

XXI.  A  SECTION  IN  MY  BIOGRAPHY 185 

XXII.  I  RETURN  TO  MY  MUTTONS 186 

XXIII.  TRAVELING  INCOGNITO       196 

XXIV.  MY  INCOGNITO  is  EXPLODED 200 

XXV.  FROM  CAIRO  TO  HICKMAN 208 

XXVI.  UNDER  FIRE 216 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGB 

XXVII.  SOME  IMPORTED  ARTICLES 225 

XXVIII.  UNCLE  MUMFORD  UNLOADS 231 

XXIX.  A  FEW  SPECIMEN  BRICKS 242 

XXX.  SKETCHES  BY  THE  WAY 252 

XXXI.  A  THUMB-PRINT  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT   .     .    .  262 
.XXXII.      THE  DISPOSAL  OF  A  BONANZA 281 

XXXIII.  REFRESHMENTS  AND  ETHICS 287 

XXXIV.  TOUGH  YARNS 293 

XXXV.  VlCKSBURG  DURING   THE   TROUBLE 296 

XXXVI.  THE  PROFESSOR'S  YARN 305 

XXXVII.  THE  END  OF  THE  "GOLD  DUST" 314 

XXXVIII.  THE  HOUSE  BEAUTIFUL 316 

XXXIX.  MANUFACTURES  AND  MISCREANTS 324 

XL.              CASTLES  AND  CULTURE 332 

XLI.            THE  METROPOLIS  OF  THE  SOUTH       339 

XLII.          HYGIENE  AND  SENTIMENT 344 

XLIII.         THE  ART  OF  INHUMATION 349 

XLIV.         CITY  SIGHTS 354 

XLV.           SOUTHERN  SPORTS 363 

XLVI.         ENCHANTMENTS  AND  ENCHANTERS 373 

XLVII.  "UNCLE  REMUS"  AND  MR.  CABLE    .....  379 

XLVIII.      SUGAR  AND  POSTAGE 382 

XLIX.         EPISODES  IN  PILOT  LIFE       391 

L.                THE  "ORIGINAL  JACOBS" 398 

LI.               REMINISCENCES 405 

LII.             A  BURNING  BRAND 414 

LIII.            MY  BOYHOOD  HOME 427 

LIV.            PAST  AND  PRESENT 434 

LV.              A  VENDETTA  AND  OTHER  THINGS 445 

LVI.            A  QUESTION  OF  LAW 453 

LVII.           AN  ARCHANGEL 461 

LVIII.         ON  THE  UPPER  RIVER 469 

LIX.            LEGENDS  AND  SCENERY 477 

LX.              SPECULATIONS  AND  CONCLUSIONS 486 

APPENDIX 497 


THE    "BODY    OF    THE    NATION" 

BUT  the  basin  of  the  Mississippi  is  the  BODY  OP 
THE  NATION.  All  the  other  parts  are  but  members, 
important  in  themselves,  yet  more  important  in  their 
relations  to  this.  Exclusive  of  the  Lake  basin  and 
of  300,000  square  miles  in  Texas  and  New  Mexico, 
which  in  many  aspects  form  a  part  of  it,  this  basin 
contains  about  1,250,000  square  miles.  In  extent  it 
is  the  second  great  valley  of  the  world,  being  ex- 
ceeded only  by  that  of  the  Amazon.  The  valley  of 
the  frozen  Obi  approaches  it  in  extent;  that  of  the 
La  Plata  comes  next  in  space,  and  probably  in 
habitable  capacity,  having  about  eight-ninths  of  its 
area;  then  comes  that  of  the  Yenisei,  with  about 
seven-ninths;  the  Lena,  Amoor,  Hoang-ho,  Yang- 
tse-kiang,  and  Nile,  five-ninths;  the  Ganges,  less 
than  one-half;  the  Indus,  less  than  one-third;  the 
Euphrates,  one-fifth;  the  Rhine,  one-fifteenth.  It 
exceeds  in  extent  the  whole  of  Europe,  exclusive  of 
Russia,  Norway,  and  Sweden.  It  would  contain 
Austria  four  times,  Germany  or  Spain  five  times, 
France  six  times,  the  British  Islands  or  Italy  ten  times. 
Conceptions  formed  from  the  river-basins  of  Western 
Europe  are  rudely  shocked  when  we  consider  the 
extent  of  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi ;  nor  are  those 
formed  from  the  sterile  basins  of  the  great  rivers  of 


THE    "BODY   OF  THE   NATION" 

Siberia,  the  lofty  plateaus  of  Central  Asia,  or  the 
mighty  sweep  of  the  swampy  Amazon  more  adequate. 
Latitude,  elevation,  and  rainfall  all  combine  to  render 
every  part  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  capable  of  sup- 
porting a  dense  population.  As  a  dwelling-place  for 
civilized  man  it  is  by  far  the  first  upon  our  globe. — 
EDITOR'S  TABLE,  Harper's  Magazine,  February,  1863. 


LIFE  ON  THE  MISSISSIPPI 

CHAPTER  I 

THE    RIVER  AND   ITS    HISTORY 

THE  Mississippi  is  well  worth  reading  about.  It 
is  not  a  commonplace  river,  but  on  the  con- 
trary is  in  all  ways  remarkable.  Considering  the 
Missouri  its  main  branch,  it  is  the  longest  river  in 
the  world — four  thousand  three  hundred  miles.  It 
seems  safe  to  say  that  it  is  also  the  crookedest  river 
in  the  world,  since  in  one  part  of  its  journey  it  uses 
up  one  thousand  three  hundred  miles  to  cover  the 
same  ground  that  the  crow  would  fly  over  in  six 
hundred  and  seventy-five.  It  discharges  three  times 
as  much  water  as  the  St.  Lawrence,  twenty-five 
times  as  much  as  the  Rhine,  and  three  hundred  and 
thirty-eight  times  as  much  as  the  Thames.  No 
other  river  has  so  vast  a  drainage-basin;  it  draws 
its  water-supply  from  twenty-eight  states  and  terri- 
tories; from  Delaware  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard,  and 
from  all  the  country  between  that  and  Idaho  on  the 
Pacific  slope — a  spread  of  forty -five  degrees  of  longi- 
tude. The  Mississippi  receives  and  carries  to  the 
Gulf  water  from  fifty-four  subordinate  rivers  that  are 


MARK    TWAIN 

navigable  by  steamboats,  and  from  some  hundreds 
that  are  navigable  by  flats  and  keels.  The  area  of  its 
drainage-basin  is  as  great  as  the  combined  areas  of 
England,  Wales,  Scotland,  Ireland,  France,  Spain, 
Portugal,  Germany,  Austria,  Italy,  and  Turkey;  and 
almost  all  this  wide  region  is  fertile;  the  Mississippi 
valley,  proper,  is  exceptionally  so. 

It  is  a  remarkable  river  in  this:  that  instead  of 
widening  toward  its  mouth,  it  grows  narrower;  grows 
narrower  and  deeper.  From  the  junction  of  the  Ohio 
to  a  point  half-way  down  to  the  sea,  the  width  aver- 
ages a  mile  in  high  water ;  thence  to  the  sea  the  width 
steadily  diminishes,  until,  at  the  "Passes,"  above  the 
mouth,  it  is  but  little  over  half  a  mile.  At  the 
junction  of  the  Ohio  the  Mississippi's  depth  is  eighty- 
seven  feet;  the  depth  increases  gradually,  reaching 
one  hundred  and  twenty-nine  just  above  the  mouth. 

The  difference  in  rise  and  fall  is  also  remarkable — 
not  in  the  upper,  but  in  the  lower  river.  The  rise  is 
tolerably  uniform  down  to  Natchez  (three  hundred 
and  sixty  miles  above  the  mouth) — about  fifty  feet. 
But  at  Bayou  La  Fourche  the  river  rises  only  twenty- 
four  feet ;  at  New  Orleans  only  fifteen,  and  just  above 
the  mouth  only  two  and  one-half. 

An  article  in  the  New  Orleans  Times-Democrat, 
based  upon  reports  of  able  engineers,  states  that  the 
river  annually  empties  four  hundred  and  six  mil- 
lion tons  of  mud  into  the  Gulf  of  Mexico — which 
brings  to  mind  Captain  Marryat's  rude  name  for  the 
Mississippi — "the  Great  Sewer."  This  mud,  solidi- 
fied, would  make  a  mass  a  mile  square  and  two  hun- 
dred and  forty-one  feet  high. 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

The  mud  deposit  gradually  extends  the  land — but 
only  gradually;  it  has  extended  it  not  quite  a  third 
of  a  mile  in  the  two  hundred  years  which  have  elapsed 
since  the  river  took  its  place  in  history. 

The  belief  of  the  scientific  people  is  that  the  mouth 
used  to  be  at  Baton  Rouge,  where  the  hills  cease,  and 
that  the  two  hundred  miles  of  land  between  there  and 
the  Gulf  was  built  by  the  river.  This  gives  us  the 
age  of  that  piece  of  country,  without  any  trouble  at 
all — one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  years.  Yet 
it  is  much  the  youthfulest  batch  of  country  that  lies 
around  there  anywhere. 

The  Mississippi  is  remarkable  in  still  another  way 
— its  disposition  to  make  prodigious  jumps  by  cut- 
ting through  narrow  necks  of  land,  and  thus  straight- 
ening and  shortening  itself.  More  than  once  it  has 
shortened  itself  thirty  miles  at  a  single  jump! 

These  cut-offs  have  had  curious  effects :  they  have 
thrown  several  river  towns  out  into  the  rural  dis- 
tricts, and  built  up  sand-bars  and  forests  infrfront 
of  them.  The  town  of  Delta  used  to  be  three  miles 
below  Vicksburg;  a  recent  cut-off  has  radically 
changed  the  position,  and  Delta  is  now  two  miles 
above  Vicksburg. 

Both  of  these  river  towns  have  been  retired  to  the 
country  by  that  cut-off.  A  cut-off  plays  havoc  with 
boundary  lines  and  jurisdictions :  for  instance,  a  man 
is  living  in  the  state  of  Mississippi  to-day,  a  cut-off 
occurs  to-night,  and  to-morrow  the  man  finds  him- 
self and  his  land  over  on  the  other  side  of  the  river, 
within  the  boundaries  and  subject  to  the  laws  of  the 
state  of  Louisiana!  Such  a  thing,  happening  in  the 
3 


MARK    TWAIN 

upper  river  in  the  old  times,  could  have  transferred  a 
slave  from  Missouri  to  Illinois  and  made  a  free  man 
of  him. 

The  Mississippi  does  not  alter  its  locality  by  cut- 
offs alone :  it  is  always  changing  its  habitat  bodily — 
is  always  moving  bodily  sidewise.  At  Hard  Times, 
Louisiana,  the  river  is  two  miles  west  of  the  region 
it  used  to  occupy.  As  a  result,  the  original  site  of 
that  settlement  is  not  now  in  Louisiana  at  all,  but 
on  the  other  side  of  the  river,  in  the  state  of  Missis- 
sippi. Nearly  the  whole  of  that  one  thousand  three 
hundred  miles  of  old  Mississippi  River  which  La  Salle 
floated  down  in  his  canoes,  two  hundred  years  ago,  is 
good  solid  dry  ground  now.  The  river  lies  to  the 
right  of  it,  in  places,  and  to  the  left  of  it  in  other 
places. 

Although  the  Mississippi's  mud  builds  land  but 
slowly,  down  at  the  mouth,  where  the  Gulf's  billows 
interfere  with  its  work,  it  builds  fast  enough  in  better 
protected  regions  higher  up:  for  instance,  Prophet's 
Island  contained  one  thousand  five  hundred  acres  of 
land  thirty  years  ago ;  since  then  the  river  has  added 
seven  hundred  acres  to  it. 

But  enough  of  these  examples  of  the  mighty 
stream's  eccentricities  for  the  present — I  will  give  a 
few  more  of  them  further  along  in  the  book. 

Let  us  drop  the  Mississippi's  physical  history,  and 
say  a  word  about  its  historical  history — so  to  speak. 
We  can  glance  briefly  at  its  slumbrous  first  epoch  in  a 
couple  of  short  chapters;  at  its  second  and  wider- 
awake  epoch  in  a  couple  more;  at  its  flushest  and 
widest-awake  epoch  in  a  good  many  succeeding 
4 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

chapters;  and  then  talk  about  its  comparatively 
tranquil  present  epoch  in  what  shall  be  left  of  the 
book. 

The  world  and  the  books  are  so  accustomed  to  use, 
and  over-use,  the  word  "new"  in  connection  with 
our  country,  that  we  early  get  and  permanently  re- 
tain the  impression  that  there  is  nothing  old  about 
it.  We  do  of  course  know  that  there  are  several 
comparatively  old  dates  in  American  history,  but 
the  mere  figures  convey  to  our  minds  no  just  idea, 
no  distinct  realization,  of  the  stretch  of  time  which 
they  represent.  To  say  that  De  Soto,  the  first 
white  man  who  ever  saw  the  Mississippi  River,  saw 
it  in  1542,  is  a  remark  which  states  a  fact  without 
interpreting  it :  it  is  something  like  giving  the 
dimensions  of  a  sunset  by  astronomical  measure- 
ments, and  cataloguing  the  colors  by  their  scientific 
names — as  a  result,  you  get  the  bald  fact  of  the 
sunset,  but  you  don't  see  the  sunset.  It  would  have 
been  better  to  paint  a  picture  of  it. 

The  date  1542,  standing  by  itself,  means  little  or 
nothing  to  us ;  but  when  one  groups  a  few  neighbor-  v 
ing  historical  dates  and  facts  around  it,  he  adds 
perspective  and  color,  and  then  realizes  that  this  is 
one  of  the  American  dates  which  is  quite  respectable 
for  age. 

For  instance,  when  the  Mississippi  was  first  seen  by 
a  white  man,  less  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  had 
elapsed  since  Francis  I.'s  defeat  at  Pavia;  the  death 
of  Raphael;  the  death  of  Bayard,  sans  peur  et  sans  ?• 
reproche;  the  driving  out  of  the  Knights-Hospitallers 
from  Rhodes  by  the  Turks ;  and  the  placarding  of  the 
S 


MARK    TWAIN 

Ninety-five  Propositions — the  act  which  began  the 
Reformation.  When  De  Soto  took  his  glimpse  of  the 
river,  Ignatius  Loyola  was  an  obscure  name;  the 
order  of  the  Jesuits  was  not  yet  a  year  old ;  Michael 
Angelo's  paint  was  not  yet  dry  on  the  "Last  Judg- 
ment" in  the  Sistine  Chapel;  Mary  Queen  of  Scots 
was  not  yet  born,  but  would  be  before  the  year 
closed.  Catherine  de  Medici  was  a  child;  Elizabeth 
of  England  was  not  yet  in  her  teens;  Calvin,  Ben- 
venuto  Cellini,  and  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  were 
at  the  top  of  their  fame,  and  each  was  manufacturing 
history  after  his  own  peculiar  fashion;  Margaret 
of  Navarre  was  writing  the  "Heptameron"  and  some 
religious  books — the  first  survives,  the  others  are 
forgotten,  wit  and  indelicacy  being  sometimes  better 
literature-preservers  than  holiness;  lax  court  morals 
and  the  absurd  chivalry  business  were  in  full  feather, 
and  the  joust  and  the  tournament  were  the  frequent 
pastime  of  titled  fine  gentlemen  who  could  fight 
better  than  they  could  spell,  while  religion  was  the 
passion  of  their  ladies,  and  the  classifying  their 
offspring  into  children  of  full  rank  and  children  by 
brevet  their  pastime.  In  fact,  all  around,  religion 
was  in  a  peculiarly  blooming  condition :  the  Council 
of  Trent  was  being  called;  the  Spanish  Inquisition 
was  roasting,  and  racking,  and  burning,  with  a  free 
hand;  elsewhere  on  the  Continent  the  nations  were 
being  persuaded  to  holy  living  by  the  sword  and  fire; 
in  England,  Henry  VIII.  had  suppressed  the  monas- 
teries, burned  Fisher  and  another  bishop  or  two,  and 
was  getting  his  English  Reformation  and  his  harem 
effectively  started.  When  De  Soto  stood  on  the 
6 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

banks  of  the  Mississippi,  it  was  still  two  years  before 
Luther's  death;  eleven  years  before  the  burning  of 
Servetus;  thirty  years  before  the  St.  Bartholomew 
slaughter;  Rabelais  had  not  yet  published;  Don  / 
Quixote  was  not  yet  written;  Shakespeare  was  not 
yet  born;  a  hundred  long  years  must  still  elapse 
before  Englishmen  would  hear  the  name  of  Oliver 
Cromwell. 

Unquestionably  the  discovery  of  the  Mississippi  is 
a  datable  fact  which  considerably  mellows  and  modi- 
fies the  shiny  newness  of  our  country,  and  gives  her  a 
most  respectable  outside  aspect  of  rustiness  and 
antiquity. 

De  Soto  merely  glimpsed  the  river,  then  died  and 
was  buried  in  it  by  his  priests  and  soldiers.  One 
would  expect  the  priests  and  the  soldiers  to  multiply 
the  river's  dimensions  by  ten — the  Spanish  custom  of 
the  day — and  thus  move  other  adventurers  to  go 
at  once  and  explore  it.  On  the  contrary,  their  nar- 
ratives, when  they  reached  home,  did  not  excite  that 
amount  of  curiosity.  The  Mississippi  was  left  un- 
visited  by  whites  during  a  term  of  years  which  seems 
incredible  in  our  energetic  days.  One  may  "sense" 
the  interval  to  his  mind,  after  a  fashion,  by  dividing 
it  up  in  this  way:  after  De  Soto  glimpsed  the  river, 
a  fraction  short  of  a  quarter  of  a  century  elapsed, 
and  then  Shakespeare  was  born;  lived  a  trifle  more 
than  half  a  century,  then  died;  and  when  he  had 
been  in  his  grave  considerably  more  than  half  a 
century,  the  second  white  man  saw  the  Mississippi. 
In  our  day  we  don't  allow  a  hundred  and  thirty  years  '  ^ 
to  elapse  between  glimpses  of  a  marvel.  If  some- 
7 


MARK    TWAIN 

body  should  discover  a  creek  in  the  county  next  to 
the  one  that  the  North  Pole  is  in,  Europe  and  America 
would  start  fifteen  costly  expeditions  thither;  one  to 
explore  the  creek,  and  the  other  fourteen  to  hunt  for 
each  other. 

For  more  than  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  there  had 
been  white  settlements  on  our  Atlantic  coasts.  These 
people  were  in  intimate  communication  with  the 
Indians:  in  the  south  the  Spaniards  were  robbing, 
slaughtering,  enslaving,  and  converting  them ;  higher 
up,  the  English  were  trading  beads  and  blankets  to 
them  for  a  consideration,  and  throwing  in  civiliza- 
tion and  whisky,  "for  lagniappe";1  and  in  Canada 
the  French  were  schooling  them  in  a  rudimentary 
way,  missionarying  among  them,  and  drawing  whole 
populations  of  them  at  a  time  to  Quebec,  and  later 
to  Montreal,  to  buy  furs  of  them.  Necessarily,  then, 
these  various  clusters  of  whites  must  have  heard  of 
the  great  river  of  the  Far  West ;  and  indeed,  they  did 
hear  of  it  vaguely — so  vaguely  and  indefinitely  that 
its  course,  proportions,  and  locality  were  hardly 
even  guessable.  The  mere  mysteriousness  of  the 
matter  ought  to  have  fired  curiosity  and  compelled 
exploration;  but  this  did  not  occur.  Apparently 
nobody  happened  to  want  such  a  river,  nobody 
needed  it,  nobody  was  curious  about  it;  so,  for  a 
century  and  a  half  the  Mississippi  remained  out  of  the 
market  and  undisturbed.  When  De  Soto  found  it, 
he  was  not  hunting  for  a  river,  and  had  no  present 
occasion  for  one;  consequently,  he  did  not  value  it 
or  even  take  any  particular  notice  of  it. 

1  See  page 
8 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

But  at  last,  La  Salle,  the  Frenchman,  conceived  the 
idea  of  seeking  out  that  river  and  exploring  it.  It 
always  happens  that  when  a  man  seizes  upon  a 
neglected  and  important  idea,  people  inflamed  with 
the  same  notion  crop  up  all  around.  It  happened  so 
in  this  instance. 

Naturally  the  question  suggests  itself,  Why  did 
these  people  want  the  river  now  when  nobody  had 
wanted  it  in  the  five  preceding  generations?  Ap- 
parently it  was  because  at  this  late  day  they  thought 
they  had  discovered  a  way  to  make  it  useful;  for  it 
had  come  to  be  believed  that  the  Mississippi  emptied 
into  the  Gulf  of  California,  and  therefore  afforded  a 
short  cut  from  Canada  to  China.  Previously  the 
supposition  had  been  that  it  emptied  into  the 
Atlantic,  or  Sea  of  Virginia. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    RIVER  AND   ITS   EXPLORERS 

A  SALLE  himself  sued  for  certain  high  privi- 
leges,  and  they  were  graciously  accorded  him  by 
Louis  XIV.  of  inflated  memory.  Chief  among  them 
was  the  privilege  to  explore,  far  and  wide,  and  build 
forts,  and  stake  out  continents,  and  hand  the  same 
over  to  the  king,  and  pay  the  expenses  himself; 
receiving,  in  return,  some  little  advantages  of  one 
sort  or  another;  among  them  the  monopoly  of 
buffalo-hides.  He  spent  several  years,  and  about  all 
of  his  money,  in  making  perilous  and  painful  trips 
between  Montreal  and  a  fort  which  he  had  built  on 
the  Illinois,  before  he  at  last  succeeded  in  getting 
his  expedition  in  such  a  shape  that  he  could  strike  for 
the  Mississippi. 

And  meantime  other  parties  had  had  better  for- 
tune. In  1673,  Joliet  the  merchant,  and  Marquette 
the  priest,  crossed  the  country  and  reached  the 
banks  of  the  Mississippi.  They  went  by  way  of  the 
Great  Lakes;  and  from  Green  Bay,  in  canoes,  by 
the  way  of  Fox  River  and  the  Wisconsin.  Mar- 
quette had  solemnly  contracted,  on  the  feast  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception,  that  if  the  Virgin  would 
permit  him  to  discover  the  great  river,  he  would 
name  it  Conception,  in  her  honor.  He  kept  his 
zo 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

word.  In  that  day,  all  explorers  traveled  with  an 
outfit  of  priests.  De  Soto  had  twenty-four  with  him. 
La  Salle  had  several,  also.  The  expeditions  were 
often  out  of  meat,  and  scant  of  clothes,  but  they 
always  had  the  furniture  and  other  requisites  for  the 
mass;  they  were  always  prepared,  as  one  of  the 
quaint  chronicles  of  the  time  phrased  it,  to  "explain 
hell  to  the  salvages." 

On  the  1 7th  of  June,  1673,  the  canoes  of  Joliet  and 
Marquette  and  their  five  subordinates  reached  the 
junction  of  the  Wisconsin  with  the  Mississippi.  Mr. 
Parkman  says : ' '  Before  them  a  wide  and  rapid  current 
coursed  athwart  their  way,  by  the  foot  of  lofty  heights 
wrapped  thick  in  forests."  He  continues:  "Turning 
southward,  they  paddled  down  the  stream,  through  a 
solitude  unrelieved  by  the  faintest  trace  of  man." 

A  big  catfish  collided  with  Marquette's  canoe,  and 
startled  him;  and  reasonably  enough,  for  he  had 
been  warned  by  the  Indians  that  he  was  on  a  fool- 
hardy journey,  and  even  a  fatal  one,  for  the  river 
contained  a  demon  "whose  roar  could  be  heard  at  a 
great  distance,  and  who  would  engulf  them  in  the 
abyss  where  he  dwelt."  I  have  seen  a  Mississippi 
catfish  that  was  more  than  six  feet  long,  and  weighed 
two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds;  and  if  Marquette's 
fish  was  the  fellow  to  that  one,  he  had  a  fair  right 
to  think  the  river's  roaring  demon  was  come. 

At  length  the  buffalo  began  to  appear,  grazing  in  herds  on  the 
great  prairies  which  then  bordered  the  river;  and  Marquette 
describes  the  fierce  and  stupid  look  of  the  old  bulls  as  they  stared 
at  the  intruders  through  the  tangled  mane  which  nearly  blinded 
them. 


MARK    TWAIN 
The  voyagers  moved  cautiously : 

Landed  at  night  and  made  a  fire  to  cook  their  evening  meal; 
then  extinguished  it,  embarked  again,  paddled  some  way  farther, 
and  anchored  in  the  stream,  keeping  a  man  on  the  watch  till 
morning. 

They  did  this  day  after  day  and  night  after  night ;  and 
at  the  end  of  two  weeks  they  had  not  seen  a  human 
being.  The  river  was  an  awful  solitude,  then.  And 
it  is  now,  over  most  of  its  stretch. 

But  at  the  close  of  the  fortnight  they  one  day  came 
upon  the  footprints  of  men  in  the  mud  of  the  western 
bank — a  Robinson  Crusoe  experience  which  carries  an 
electric  shiver  with  it  yet,  when  one  stumbles  on  it  in 
print.  They  had  been  warned  that  the  river  Indians 
were  as  ferocious  and  pitiless  as  the  river  demon,  and 
destroyed  all  comers  without  waiting  for  provocation; 
but  no  matter,  Joliet  and  Marquette  struck  into  the 
country  to  hunt  up  the  proprietors  of  the  tracks. 
They  found  them  by  and  by,  and  were  hospitably 
received  and  well  treated — if  to  be  received  by  an 
Indian  chief  who  has  taken  off  his  last  rag  in  order  to 
appear  at  his  level  best  is  to  be  received  hospitably ; 
and  if  to  be  treated  abundantly  to  fish,  porridge, 
and  other  game,  including  dog,  and  have  these  things 
forked  into  one's  mouth  by  the  ungloved  fingers  of 
Indians,  is  to  be  well  treated.  In  the  morning  the 
chief  and  six  hundred  of  his  tribesmen  escorted  the 
Frenchmen  to  the  river  and  bade  them  a  friendly 
farewell. 

On  the  rocks  above  the  present  city  of  Alton  they 
found  some  rude  and  fantastic  Indian  paintings, 
which  they  describe.  A  short  distance  below  "a  tor- 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

rent  of  yellow  mud  rushed  furiously  athwart  the  calm 
blue  current  of  the  Mississippi,  boiling  and  surging 
and  sweeping  in  its  course  logs,  branches,  and  up- 
rooted trees."  This  was  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri, 
"that  savage  river,"  which  "descending  from  its 
mad  career  through  a  vast  unknown  of  barbarism, 
poured  its  turbid  floods  into  the  bosom  of  its  gentle 
sister." 

By  and  by  they  passed  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio ;  they 
passed  canebrakes;  they  fought  mosquitoes;  they 
floated  along,  day  after  day,  through  the  deep  silence 
and  loneliness  of  the  river,  drowsing  in  the  scant 
shade  of  makeshift  awnings,  and  broiling  with  the 
heat;  they  encountered  and  exchanged  civilities 
with  another  party  of  Indians;  and  at  last  they 
reached  the  mouth  of  the  Arkansas  (about  a  month 
out  from  their  starting-point),  where  a  tribe  of  war- 
whooping  savages  swarmed  out  to  meet  and  murder 
them;  but  they  appealed  to  the  Virgin  for  help; 
so  in  place  of  a  fight  there  was  a  feast,  and  plenty  of 
pleasant  palaver  and  fol-de-rol. 

They  had  proved  to  their  satisfaction  that  the    ^s 
Mississippi  did  not  empty  into  the  Gulf  of  Cali- 
fornia or  into  the  Atlantic.     They  believed  it  emp- 
tied into  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.     They  turned  back 
now,  and  carried  their  great  news  to  Canada. 

But  belief  is  not  proof.     It  was  reserved  for  La        * 
Salle  to  furnish  the  proof.     He  was  provokingly 
delayed  by  one  misfortune  after  another,  but  at  last 
got  his  expedition  under  way  at  the  end  of  the  year   N 
1 68 !_..._.  In  the  dead  of  winter  he  and  Henri  de  Tonty, 
son  of  Lorenzo  Tonty,  who  invented  the  tontine, 
13 


MARK     TWAIN 

his  lieutenant,  started  down  the  Illinois,  with  a  fol- 
lowing of  eighteen  Indians  brought  from  New 
England,  and  twenty-three  Frenchmen.  They  moved 
in  procession  down  the  surface  of  the  frozen  river, 
on  foot,  and  dragging  their  canoes  after  them  on 
sledges. 

At  Peoria  Lake  they  struck  open  water,  and  pad- 
dled thence  to  the  Mississippi  and  turned  their  prows 
southward.  They  plowed  through  the  fields  of 
floating  ice,  past  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri;  past 
the  mouth  of  the  Ohio,  by  and  by;  "and,  gliding  by 
the  wastes  of  bordering  swamp,  landed  on  the  24th 
of  February  near  the  Third  Chickasaw  Bluffs," 
where  they  halted  and  built  Fort  Prudhomme. 

"Again,"  says  Mr.  Parkman,  "they  embarked;  and 
with  every  stage  of  their  adventurous  progress,  the 
mystery  of  this  vast  new  world  was  more  and  more 
unveiled.  More  and  more  they  entered  the  realms  of 
spring.  The  hazy  sunlight,  the  warm  and  drowsy 
air,  the  tender  foliage,  the  opening  flowers,  be- 
tokened the  reviving  life  of  nature." 

Day  by  day  they  floated  down  the  great  bends,  in 
the  shadow  of  the  dense  forests,  and  in  time  arrived  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Arkansas.  First  they  were  greeted 
by  the  natives  of  this  locality  as  Marquette  had  be- 
fore been  greeted  by  them — with  the  booming  of  the 
war-drum  and  a  flourish  of  arms.  The  Virgin  com- 
posed the  difficulty  in  Marquette's  case;  the  pipe  of 
peace  did  the  same  office  for  La  Salle.  The  white 
man  and  the  red  man  struck  hands  and  enter- 
tained each  other  during  three  days.  Then,  to  the 
admiration  of  the  savages,  La  Salle  set  up  a  cross 
14 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

with  the  arms  of  France  on  it,  and  took  possession  of  ^ 
the  whole  country  for  the  king — the  cool  fashion  of 
the  time — while  the  priest  piously  consecrated  the 
robbery  with  a  hymn.  The  priest  explained  the 
mysteries  of  the  faith  "by  signs,"  for  the  saving  of 
the  savages;  thus  compensating  them  with  possible 
possessions  in  heaven  for  the  certain  ones  on  earth 
which  they  had  just  been  robbed  of.  And  also,  by 
signs,  La  Salle  drew  from  these  simple  children  of  the 
forest  acknowledgments  of  fealty  to  Louis  the  Putrid, 
over  the  water.  Nobody  smiled  at  these  colossal-- 
ironies. 

These  performances  took  place  on  the  site  of  the 
future  town  of  Napoleon,  Arkansas,  and  there  the 
first  confiscation  cross  was  raised  on  the  banks  of 
the  great  river.  Marquette's  and  Joliet's  voyage  of 
discovery  ended  at  the  same  spot — the  site  of  the 
future  town  of  Napoleon.  When  De  Soto  took  his 
fleeting  glimpse  of  the  river,  away  back  in  the  dim 
early  days,  he  took  it  from  that  same  spot — the  site  of 
the  future  town  of  Napoleon,  Arkansas.  Therefore, 
three  out  of  the  four  memorable  events  connected 
with  the  discovery  and  exploration  of  the  mighty  / 
river  occurred,  by  accident,  in  one  and  the  same 
place.  It  is  a  most  curious  distinction,  when  one 
comes  to  look  at  it  and  think  about  it.  France  stole 
that  vast  country  on  that  spot,  the  future  Napoleon; 
and  by  and  by  Napoleon  himself  was  to  give  the 
country  back  again — make  restitution,  not  to  the 
owners,  but  to  their  white  American  heirs. 

The  voyagers  journeyed  on,   touching  here  and 
there;    "passed  the  sites,  since  become  historic,  of 
15 


MARK     TWAIN 

Vicksburg  and  Grand  Gulf";  and  visited  an  impos- 
ing Indian  monarch  in  the  Teche  country,  whose 
capital  city  was  a  substantial  one  of  sun-baked 
bricks  mixed  with  straw — better  houses  than  many 
that  exist  there  now.  The  chief's  house  contained 
an  audience-room  forty  feet  square;  and  there  he 
received  Tonty  in  state,  surrounded  by  sixty  old 
men  clothed  in  white  cloaks.  There  was  a  temple 
in  the  town,  with  a  mud  wall  about  it  ornamented 
with  skulls  of  enemies  sacrificed  to  the  sun. 

The  voyagers  visited  the  Natchez  Indians,  near  the 
site  of  the  present  city  of  that  name,  where  they 
found  a  "religious  and  political  depotism,  a  privileged 
class  descended  from  the  sun,  a  temple,  and  a  sacred 
fire."  It  must  have  been  like  getting  home  again; 
it  was  home  again;  it  was  home  with  an  advantage, 
in  fact,  for  it  lacked  Louis  XIV. 

A  few  more  days  swept  swiftly  by,  and  La  Salle 
stood  in  the  shadow  of  his  confiscating  cross,  at  a 
meeting  of  the  waters  from  Delaware,  and  from 
Itasca,  and  from  the  mountain  ranges  close  upon  the 
Pacific,  with  the  waters  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  his 
task  finished,  his  prodigy  achieved.  Mr.  Parkman, 
in  closing  his  fascinating  narrative,  thus  sums  up: 

On  that  day  the  realm  of  France  received  on  parchment  a 
stupendous  accession.  The  fertile  plains  of  Texas;  the  vast 
basin  of  the  Mississippi,  from  its  frozen  northern  springs  to  the 
sultry  borders  of  the  Gulf;  from  the  woody  ridges  of  the  Al- 
leghanies  to  the  bare  peaks  of  the  Rocky  Mountains — a  region 
of  savannas  and  forests,  sun-cracked  deserts  and  grassy  prairies, 
watered  by  a  thousand  rivers,  ranged  by  a  thousand  warlike 
tribes,  passed  beneath  the  scepter  of  the  Sultan  of  Versailles;  and 
all  by  virtue  of  a  feeble  human  voice,  inaudible  a  half  a  mile. 
16 


CHAPTER  III 

FRESCOS    FROM   THE    PAST 

A  PPARENTLY  the  river  was  ready  for  business, 
/~\  now.  But  no ;  the  distribution  of  a  population 
along  its  banks  was  as  calm  and  deliberate  and  time- 
devouring  a  process  as  the  discovery  and  exploration 
had  "been. 

Seventy  years  elapsed  after  the  exploration  before  , 
the  river's  borders  had  a  white  population  worth 
considering;  and  nearly  fifty  more  before  the  river 
had  a  commerce.  Between  La  Salle's  opening  of  the 
river  and  the  time  when  it  may  be  said  to  have  be- 
come the  vehicle  of  anything  like  a  regular  and  active 
commerce,  seven  sovereigns  had  occupied  the  throne 
of  England,  America  had  become  an  independent 
nation,  Louis  XIV.  and  Louis  XV.  had  rotted  and 
died,  the  French  monarchy  had  gone  down  in  the  red 
tempest  of  the  Revolution,  and  Napoleon  was  a 
name  that  was  beginning  to  be  talked  about.  Truly, 
there  were  snails  in  those  days. 

The  river's  earliest  commerce  was  in  great  barges  \  * 
— keelboats,  broadhorns.  They  floated  and  sailed 
from  the  upper  rivers  to  New  Orleans,  changed  car- 
goes there,  and  were  tediously  warped  and  poled 
back  by  hand.  A  voyage  down  and  back  some- 
times occupied  nine  months.  In  time  this  commerce 
17 


MARK     TWAIN 

increased  until  it  gave  employment  to  hordes  of 
rough  and  hardy  men;  rude,  uneducated,  brave, 
suffering  terrific  hardships  with  sailor-like  stoicism; 
heavy  drinkers,  coarse  frolickers  in  moral  sties  like 
the  Natchez-under-the-hill  of  that  day,  heavy 
fighters,  reckless  fellows,  every  one,  elephantinely 
jolly,  foul-witted,  profane,  prodigal  of  their  money, 
bankrupt  at  the  end  of  the  trip,  fond  of  barbaric 
finery,  prodigious  braggarts;  yet,  in  the  main, 
honest,  trustworthy,  faithful  to  promises  and  duty, 
and  often  picturesquely  magnanimous. 

By  and  by  the  steamboat  intruded.  Then,  for 
fifteen  or  twenty  years,  these  men  continued  to  run 
their  keelboats  down-stream,  and  the  steamers  did 
all  of  the  up-stream  business,  the  keelboatmen  selling 
their  boats  in  New  Orleans,  and  returning  home  as 
deck-passengers  in  the  steamers. 

But  after  a  while  the  steamboats  so  increased  in 
number  and  in  speed  that  they  were  able  to  absorb 
the  entire  commerce;  and  then  keelboating  died  a 
permanent  death.  The  keelboatman  became  a  deck- 
hand, or  a  mate,  or  a  pilot  on  the  steamer ;  and  when 
steamer-berths  were  not  open  to  him,  he  took  a 
berth  on  a  Pittsburg  coal-flat,  or  on  a  pine  raft 
constructed  in  the  forests  up  toward  the  sources  of 
the  Mississippi. 

In  the  heyday  of  the  steamboating  prosperity,  the 
river  from  end  to  end  was  flaked  with  coal-fleets  and 
timber-rafts,  all  managed  by  hand,  and  employing 
hosts  of  the  rough  characters  whom  I  have  been  try- 
ing to  describe.  I  remember  the  annual  processions 
of  miehty  rafts  that  used  to  glide  by  Hannibal  when 
18 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

I  was  a  boy — an  acre  or  so  of  white,  sweet-smelling 
boards  in  each  raft,  a  crew  of  two  dozen  men  or 
more,  three  or  four  wigwams  scattered  about  the 
raft's  vast  level  space  for  storm-quarters — and  I 
remember  the  rude  ways  and  the  tremendous  talk 
of  their  big  crews,  the  ex-keelboatmen  and  their 
admiringly  patterning  successors;  for  we  used  to 
swim  out  a  quarter  or  a  third  of  a  mile  and  get  on 
these  rafts  and  have  a  ride. 

By  way  of  illustrating  keelboat  talk  and  manners, 
and  that  now  departed  and  hardly  remembered  raft 
life,  I  will  throw  in,  in  this  place,  a  chapter  from  a 
book  which  I  have  been  working  at,  by  fits  and  starts, 
during  the  past  five  or  six  years,  and  may  possibly 
finish  in  the  course  of  five  or  six  more.  The  book  is  a 
story  which  details  some  passages  in  the  life  of  an 
ignorant  village  boy,  Huck  Finn,  son  of  the  town 
drunkard  of  my  time  out  West,  there.  He  has  run 
away  from  his  persecuting  father,  and  from  a 
persecuting  good  widow  who  wishes  to  make  a  nice, 
truth-telling,  respectable  boy  of  him ;  and  with  him  a 
slave  of  the  widow's  has  also  escaped.  They  have 
found  a  fragment  of  a  lumber-raft  (it  is  high  water 
and  dead  summer-time),  and  are  floating  down  the 
river  by  night,  and  hiding  in  the  willows  by  day — 
bound  for  Cairo,  whence  the  negro  will  seek  freedom 
in  the  heart  of  the  free  states.  But,  in  a  fog,  they 
pass  Cairo  without  knowing  it.  By  and  by  they 
begin  to  suspect  the  truth,  and  Huck  Finn  is  per- 
suaded to  end  the  dismal  suspense  by  swimming 
down  to  a  huge  raft  which  they  have  seen  in  the 
distance  ahead  of  them,  creeping  aboard  under  cover 
19 


MARK     TWAIN 

of  the  darkness,  and  gathering  the  needed  informa- 
tion by  eavesdropping: 

But  you  know  a  young  person  can't  wait  very  well  when  he 
is  impatient  to  find  a  thing  out.  We  talked  it  over,  and  by 
and  by  Jim  said  it  was  such  a  black  night,  now,  that  it  wouldn't 
be  no  risk  to  swim  down  to  the  big  raft  and  crawl  aboard  and 
listen — they  would  talk  about  Cairo,  because  they  would  be 
calculating  to  go  ashore  there  for  a  spree,  maybe;  or  anyway 
they  would  send  boats  ashore  to  buy  whisky  or  fresh  meat  or 
something.  Jim  had  a  wonderful  level  head,  for  a  nigger:  he 
could  most  always  start  a  good  plan  when  you  wanted  one. 

I  stood  up  and  shook  my  rags  off  and  jumped  into  the  river, 
and  struck  out  for  the  raft's  light.  By  and  by,  when  I  got 
down  nearly  to  her,  I  eased  up  and  went  slow  and  cautious. 
But  everything  was.  all  right — nobody  at  the  sweeps.  So  I 
swum-  down  along  the  raft  till  I  was  most  abreast  the  camp-fire 
in  the  middle,  then  I  crawled  aboard  and  inched  along  and  got 
in  among  some  bundles  of  shingles  on  the  weather  side  of  the 
fire.  There  was  thirteen  men  there — they  was  the  watch  on 
deck  of  course.  And  a  mighty  rough-looking  lot,  too.  They 
had  a  jug,  and  tin  cups,  and  they  kept  the  jug  moving.  One 
man  was  singing — roaring,  you  may  say;  and  it  wasn't  a  nice 
song — for  a  parlor,  anyway.  He  roared  through  his  nose,  and 
strung  out  the  last  word  of  every  line  very  long.  When  he  was 
done  they  all  fetched  a  kind  of  Injun  war-whoop,  and  then 
another  was  sung.  It  begun: 

"There  was  a  woman  in  our  towdn, 
In  our  towdn  did  dwed'l  [dwell], 
She  loved  her  husband  dear-i-lee, 
But  another  man  twyste  as  wed'l. 

"Singing  too,  riloo,  riloo,  riloo, 

Ri-too,  riloo,  rilay e, 

She  loved  her  husband  dear-i-lee, 
But  another  man  twyste  as  wed'l." 

And  so  on — fourteen  verses.     It  was  kind  of  poor,  and  when 

he  was  going  to  start  on  the  next  verse  one  of  them  said  it  was 

the  tune  the  old  cow  died  on;  and  another  one  said:  "Oh,  give 

20 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

us  a  rest!"  And  another  one  told  him  to  take  a  walk.  They 
made  fun  of  him  till  he  got  mad  and  jumped  up  and  begun  to 
cuss  the  crowd,  and  said  he  could  lam  any  thief  in  the  lot. 

They  was  all  about  to  make  a  break  for  him,  but  the  biggest 
man  there  jumped  up  and  says: 

"Set  whar  you  are,  gentlemen.  Leave  him  to  me;  he's  my 
meat." 

Then  he  jumped  up  in  the  air  three  times,  and  cracked  his 
heels  together  every  time.  He  flung  off  a  buckskin  coat  that 
was  all  hung  with  fringes,  and  says,  "You  lay  thar  tell  the 
chawin-up's  done  ";  and  flung  his  hat  down,  which  was  all  over 
ribbons,  and  says,  "You  lay  thar  tell  his  sufferin's  is  over." 

Then  he  jumped  up  in  the  air  and  cracked  his  heels  together 
again,  and  shouted  out: 

"Whoo-oop!  I'm  the  old  original  iron-jawed,  brass-mounted, 
copper-bellied  corpse-maker  from  the  wilds  of  Arkansaw!  Look 
at  me!  I'm  the  man  they  call  Sudden  Death  and  General 
Desolation!  Sired  by  a  hurricane,  dam'd  by  an  earthquake, 
half-brother  to  the  cholera,  nearly  related  to  the  smallpox  on 
the  mother's  side!  Look  at  me!  I  take  nineteen  alligators  and • 
a  bar'l  of  whisky  for  breakfast  when  I'm  in  robust  health,  and 
a  bushel  of  rattlesnakes  and  a  dead  body  when  I'm  ailing.  I 
split  the  everlasting  rocks  with  my  glance,  and  I  squench  the 
thunder  when  I  speak!  Whoo-oop!  Stand  back  and  give  me 
room  according  to  my  strength!  Blood's  my  natural  drink,  and 
the  wails  of  the  dying  is  music  to  my  ear.  Cast  your  eye  on 
me,  gentlemen!  and  lay  low  and  hold  your  breath,  for  I'm  'bout 
to  turn  myself  loose!" 

All  the  time  he  was  getting  this  off,  he  was  shaking  his  head 
and  looking  fierce,  and  kind  of  swelling  around  in  a  little  circle, 
tucking  up  his  wristbands,  and  now  and  then  straightening  up 
and  beating  his  breast  with  his  fist,  saying,  "Look  at  me,  gentle- 
men!" When  he  got  through,  he  jumped  up  and  cracked  his 
heels  together  three  times,  and  let  off  a  roaring  "Whoo-oop! 
I'm  the  bloodiest  son  of  a  wildcat  that  lives!" 

Then  the  man  that  had  started  the  row  tilted  his  old  slouch 
hat  down  over  his  right  eye;  then  he  bent  stooping  forward,  with 
his  back  sagged  and  his  south  end  sticking  out  far,  and  his  fists 
a-shoving  out  and  drawing  in  in  front  of  him,  and  so  went  around 
in  a  little  circle  about  three  times,  swelling  himself  up  and 
breathing  hard.  Then  he  straightened,  and  jumped  up  and 


MARK    TWAIN 

cracked  his  heels  together  three  times  before  he  lit  again  (that 
made  them  cheer),  and  he  began  to  shout  like  this: 

"Whoo-oop!  bow  your  neck  and  spread,  for  the  kingdom  of 
sorrow's  a-coming!  Hold  me  down  to  the  earth,  for  I  feel  my 
powers  a-working!  whoo-oop!  I'm  a  child  of  sin,  don't  let  me 
get  a  start!  Smoked  glass,  here,  for  all!  Don't  attempt  to 
look  at  me  with  the  naked  eye,  gentlemen!  When  I'm  playful 
I  use  the  meridians  of  longitude  and  parallels  of  latitude  for  a 
seine,  and  drag  the  Atlantic  Ocean  for  whales!  I  scratch  my 
head  with  the  lightning  and  purr  myself  to  sleep  with  the  thunder! 
When  I'm  cold,  I  bile  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  bathe  in  it;  when 
I'm  hot  I  fan  myself  with  an  equinoctial  storm;  when  I'm 
thirsty  I  reach  up  and  suck  a  cloud  dry  like  a  sponge;  when  I 
range  the  earth  hungry,  famine  follows  in  my  tracks !  Whoo-oop ! 
Bow  your  neck  and  spread!  I  put  my  hand  on  the  sun's  face 
and  make  it  night  in  the  earth;  I  bite  a  piece  out  of  the  moon 
and  hurry  the  seasons;  I  shake  myself  and  crumble  the  moun- 
tainS!  Contemplate  me  through  leather — don't  use  the  naked 
eye!  I'm  the  man  with  a  petrified  heart  and  biler-iron  bowels! 
The  massacre  of  isolated  communities  is  the  pastime  of  my 
idle  moments,  the  destruction  of  nationalities  the  serious  busi- 
ness of  my  life!  The  boundless  vastness  of  the  great  American 
desert  is  my  inclosed  property,  and  I  bury  my  dead  on  my 
own  premises!"  He  jumped  up  and  cracked  his  heels  together 
three  times  before  he  lit  (they  cheered  him  again),  and  as  he  come 
down  he  shouted  out:  "Whoo-oop!  bow  your  neck  and  spread, 
for  the  Pet  Child  of  Calamity's  a-coming!" 

Then  the  other  one  went  to  swelling  around  and  blowing 
again — the  first  one — the  one  they  called  Bob;  next,  the  Child 
of  Calamity  chipped  in  again,  bigger  than  ever;  then  they  both 
got  at  it  at  the  same  time,  swelling  round  and  round  each  other 
and  punching  their  fists  most  into  each  other's  faces,  and  whoop- 
ing and  jawing  like  Injuns;  then  Bob  called  the  Child  names, 
and  the  Child  called  him  names  back  again;  next,  Bob  called 
him  a  heap  rougher  names,  and  the  Child  come  back  at  him  with 
the  very  worst  kind  of  language;  next,  Bob  knocked  the  Child's 
hat  off,  and  the  Child  picked  it  up  and  kicked  Bob's  ribbony 
hat  about  six  foot;  Bob  went  and  got  it  and  said  never  mind,  this 
warn't  going  to  be  the  last  of  this  thing,  because  he  was  a  man 
that  never  forgot  and  never  forgive,  and  so  the  Child  better 
look  out,  for  there  was  a  time  a-coming,  just  as  sure  as  he  was  a 

22 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

living  man,  that  he  would  have  to  answer  to  him  with  the  best 
blood  in  his  body.  The  Child  said  no  man  was  willinger  than 
he  for  that  time  to  come,  and  he  would  give  Bob  fair  warning, 
now,  never  to  cross  his  path  again,  for  he  could  never  rest  till 
he  had  waded  in  his  blood,  for  such  was  his  nature,  though  he 
was  sparing  him  now  on  account  of  his  family,  if  he  had  one. 

Both  of  them  was  edging  away  in  different  directions,  growling 
and  shaking  their  heads  and  going  on  about  what  they  was 
going  to  do;  but  a  little  black- whiskered  chap  skipped  up  and 
says: 

"Come  back  here,  you  couple  of  chicken-livered  cowards,  and 
I'll  thrash  the  two  of  ye!" 

And  he  done  it,  too.  He  snatched  them,  he  jerked  them  this 
way  and  that,  he  booted  them  around,  he  knocked  them  sprawl- 
ing faster  than  they  could  get  up.  Why,  it  warn't  two  minutes 
till  they  begged  like  dogs — and  how  the  other  lot  did  yell  and 
laugh  and  clap  their  hands  all  the  way  through,  and  shout, 
"Sail  in,  Corpse-Maker!"  "Hi!  at  him  again,  Child  of  Ca- 
lamity!" "Bully  for  you,  little  Davy!"  Well,  it  was  a  perfect 
pow-wow  for  a  while.  Bob  and  the  Child  had  red  noses  and 
black  eyes  when  they  got  through.  Little  Davy  made  them 
own  up  that  they  was  sneaks  and  cowards  and  not  fit  to  eat 
with  a  dog  or  drink  with  a  nigger;  then  Bob  and  the  Child  shook 
hands  with  each  other,  very  solemn,  and  said  they  had  always 
respected  each  other  and  was  willing  to  let  bygones  be  bygones. 
So  then  they  washed  their  faces  in  the  river;  and  just  then  there 
was  a  loud  order  to  stand  by  for  a  crossing,  and  some  of  them 
went  forward  to  man  the  sweeps  there,  and  the  rest  went  aft  to 
handle  the  after  sweeps. 

I  lay  still  and  waited  for  fifteen  minutes,  and  had  a  smoke 
out  of  a  pipe  that  one  of  them  left  in  reach;  then  the  crossing 
was  finished,  and  they  stumped  back  and  had  a  drink  around 
and  went  to  talking  and  singing  again.  Next  they  got  out  an 
old  fiddle,  and  one  played,  and  another  patted  juba,  and  the 
rest  turned  themselves  loose  on  a  regular  old-fashioned  keelboat 
breakdown.  They  couldn't  keep  that  up  very  long  without 
getting  winded,  so  by  and  by  they  settled  around  the  jug  again. 

They  sung  "Jolly,  Jolly  Raftsman's  the  Life  for  Me,"  with 

a  rousing  chorus,  and  then  they  got  to  talking  about  differences 

betwixt  hogs,  and  their  different  kind  of  habits;  and  next  about 

women  and  their  different  ways;  and  next  about  the  best  ways 

23 


MARK    TWAIN 

to  put  out  houses  that  was  afire;  and  next  about  what  ought  to 
be  done  with  the  Injuns;  and  next  about  what  a  king  had  to  do, 
and  how  much  he  got;  and  next  about  how  to  make  cats  fight; 
and  next  about  what  to  do  when  a  man  has  fits;  and  next  about 
differences  betwixt  clear- water  rivers  and  muddy- water  ones. 
The  man  they  called  Ed  said  the  muddy  Mississippi  water  was 
wholesomer  to  drink  than  the  clear  water  of  the  Ohio;  he  said 
if  you  let  a  pint  of  this  yaller  Mississippi  water  settle,  you  would 
have  about  a  half  to  three-quarters  of  an  inch  of  mud  in  the 
bottom,  according  to  the  stage  of  the  river,  and  then  it  warn't 
no  better  than  Ohio  water — what  you  wanted  to  do  was  to  keep 
it  stirred  up — and  when  the  river  was  low,  keep  mud  on  hand 
to  put  in  and  thicken  the  water  up  the  way  it  ought  to  be. 

The  Child  of  Calamity  said  that  was  so;  he  said  there  was 
nutritiousness  in  the  mud,  and  a  man  that  drunk  Mississippi 
water  could  grow  corn  in  his  stomach  if  he  wanted  to.  He  says: 

"You  look  at  the  graveyards;  that  tells  the  tale.  Trees 
won't  grow  worth  shucks  in  a  Cincinnati  graveyard,  but  in  a 
Sent  Louis  graveyard  they  grow  upwards  of  eight  hundred  foot 
high.  It's  all  on  account  of  the  water  the  people  drunk  before 
they  laid  up.  A  Cincinnati  corpse  don't  richen  a  soil  any." 

And  they  talked  about  how  Ohio  water  didn't  like  to  mix  with 
Mississippi  water.  Ed  said  if  you  take  the  Mississippi  on  a 
rise  when  the  Ohio  is  low,  you'll  find  a  wide  band  of  clear  water 
all  the  way  down  the  east  side  of  the  Mississippi  for  a  hundred 
mile  or  more,  and  the  minute  you  get  out  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
from  shore  and  pass  the  line,  it  is  all  thick  and  yaller  the  rest  of 
the  way  across.  Then  they  talked  about  how  to  keep  tobacco 
from  getting  moldy,  and  from  that  they  went  into  ghosts  and 
told  about  a  lot  that  other  folks  had  seen;  but  Ed  says: 

"Why  don't  you  tell  something  that  you've  seen  yourselves? 
Now  let  me  have  a  say.  Five  years  ago  I  was  on  a  raft  as  big  as 
this,  and  right  along  here  it  was  a  bright  moonshiny  night,  and 
I  was  on  watch  and  boss  of  the  stabboard  oar  forrard,  and  one 
of  my  pards  was  a  man  named  Dick  Allbright,  and  he  come  along 
to  where  I  was  sitting,  forrard — gaping  and  stretching,  he  was — 
and  stooped  down  on  the  edge  of  the  raft  and  washed  his  face 
in  the  river,  and  come  and  set  down  by  me  and  got  out  his  pipe, 
and  had  just  got  it  filled,  when  he  looks  up  and  says: 

"'Why  looky-here,'  he  says,  'ain't  that  Buck  Miller's  place, 
over  yander  in  the  bend?' 

24 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

"'Yes,'  says  I,  'it  is — why?'  He  laid  his  pipe  down  and 
leaned  his  head  on  his  hand,  and  says: 

'"I  thought  we'd  be  furder  down.'     I  says: 

" '  I  thought  it,  too,  when  I  went  off  watch' — we  was  standing 
six  hours  on  and  six  off — 'but  the  boys  told  me,'  I  says,  'that 
the  raft  didn't  seem  to  hardly  move,  for  the  last  hour,'  says  I, 
'though  she's  a-slipping  along  all  right  now,'  says  I.  He  give 
a  kind  of  a  groan,  and  says: 

"'I've  seed  a  raft  act  so  before,  along  here,'  he  says,  "pears 
to  me  the  current  has  most  quit  above  the  head  of  this  bend 
durin'  the  last  two  years,'  he  says. 

"Well,  he  raised  up  two  or  three  times,  and  looked  away  off 
and  around  on  the  water.  That  started  me  at  it,  too.  A  body 
is  always  doing  what  he  sees  somebody  else  doing,  though  there 
mayn't  be  no  sense  in  it.  Pretty  soon  I  see  a  black  something 
floating  on  the  water  away  off  to  stabboard  and  quartering 
behind  us.  I  see  he  was  looking  at  it,  too.  I  says: 

" '  What's  that? '    He  says,  sort  of  pettish  : 

""Tain't  nothing  but  an  old  empty  bar'l.' 

"'An  empty  bar'l!'  says  I,  'why,'  says  I,  'a  spy-glass  is  a  fool 
to  your  eyes.  How  can  you  tell  it's  an  empty  bar'l?'  He  says: 

'"I  don't  know;  I  reckon  it  ain't  a  bar'l,  but  I  thought  it 
might  be,'  says  he. 

"'Yes,'  I  says,  'so  it  might  be,  and  it  might  be  anything  else, 
too;  a  body  can't  tell  nothing  about  it,  such  a  distance  as  that,' 
I  says. 

"  We  hadn't  nothing  else  to  do,  so  we  kept  on  watching  it.  By 
and  by  I  says: 

"'Why,  looky-here,  Dick  Allbright,  that  thing's  a-gaining  on 
us,  I  believe.' 

"He  never  said  nothing.  The  thing  gained  and  gained,  and 
I  judged  it  must  be  a  dog  that  was  about  tired  out.  Well,  we 
swung  down  into  the  crossing,  and  the  thing  floated  across  the 
bright  streak  of  the  moonshine,  and  by  George,  it  was  a  bar'l. 
Says  I: 

" '  Dick  Allbright,  what  made  you  think  that  thing  was  a  bar'l, 
when  it  was  half  a  mile  off? '  says  I.  Says  he: 

"'I  don't  know.'     Says  I: 

'"You  tell  me,  Dick  Allbright.'    Says  he: 

'"Well,  I  knowed  it  was  a  bar'l;  I've  seen  it  before;  lots  has 
seen  it;  they  says  it's  a  ha'nted  bar'l.' 
25 


MARK     TWAIN 

"I  called  the  rest  of  the  watch,  and  they  come  and  stood 
there,  and  I  told  them  what  Dick  said.  It  floated  right  along 
abreast,  now,  and  didn't  gain  any  more.  It  was  about  twenty 
foot  off.  Some  was  for  having  it  aboard,  but  the  rest  didn't 
want  to.  Dick  Allbright  said  rafts  that  had  fooled  with  it  had 
got  bad  luck  by  it.  The  captain  of  the  watch  said  he  didn't 
believe  in  it.  He  said  he  reckoned  the  bar'l  gained  on  us  because 
it  was  in  a  little  better  current  than  what  we  was.  He  said  it 
would  leave  by  and  by. 

"So  then  we  went  to  talking  about  other  things,  and  we  had 
a  song,  and  then  a  breakdown;  and  after  that  the  captain  of  the 
watch  called  for  another  song;  but  it  was  clouding  up  now,  and 
the  bar'l  stuck  right  thar  in  the  same  place,  and  the  song  didn't 
seem  to  have  much  warm-up  to  it,  somehow,  and  so  they  didn't 
finish  it,  and  there  warn't  any  cheers,  but  it  sort  of  dropped  flat, 
and  nobody  said  anything  for  a  minute.  Then  everybody  tried 
to  talk  at  once,  and  one  chap  got  off  a  joke,  but  it  warn't  no  use, 
they  didn't  laugh,  and  even  the  chap  that  made  the  joke  didn't 
laugh  at  it,  which  ain't  usual.  We  all  just  settled  down  glum, 
and  watched  the  bar'l,  and  was  oneasy  and  oncomfortable. 
Well,  sir,  it  shut  down  black  and  still,  and  then  the  wind  began 
to  moan  around,  and  next  the  lightning  began  to  play  and  the 
thunder  to  grumble.  And  pretty  soon  there  was  a  regular  storm, 
and  in  the  middle  of  it  a  man  that  was  running  aft  stumbled 
and  fell  and  sprained  his  ankle  so  that  he  had  to  lay  up.  This 
made  the  boys  shake  their  heads.  And  every  time  the  lightning 
come,  there  was  that  bar'l,  with  the  blue  lights  winking  around 
it.  We  was  always  on  the  lookout  for  it.  But  by  and  by, 
toward  dawn,  she  was  gone.  When  the  day  come  we  couldn't 
see  her  anywhere,  and  we  warn't  sorry,  either. 

"But  next  night  about  half  past  nine,  when  there  was  songs 
and  high  jinks  going  on,  here  she  comes  again,  and  took  her  old 
roost  on  the  stabboard  side.  There  warn't  no  more  high  jinks. 
Everybody  got  solemn;  nobody  talked;  you  couldn't  get  anybody 
to  do  anything  but  set  around  moody  and  look  at  the  bar'l. 
It  begun  to  cloud  up  again.  When  the  watch  changed,  the  off 
watch  stayed  up,  'stead  of  turning  in.  The  storm  ripped  and 
roared  around  all  night,  and  in  the  middle  of  it  another  man 
tripped  and  sprained  his  ankle,  and  had  to  knock  off.  The 
bar'l  left  toward  day,  and  nobody  see  it  go. 

"Everybody  was  sober  and  down  in  the  mouth  all  day.  I 
26 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

don't  mean  the  kind  of  sober  that  comes  of  leaving  liquor  alone 
— not  that.  They  was  quiet,  but  they  all  drunk  more  than  usual 
— not  together,  but  each  man  sidled  off  and  took  it  private,  by 
himself. 

"After  dark  the  off  watch  didn't  turn  in;  nobody  sung,  nobody 
talked;  the  boys  didn't  scatter  around,  neither;  they  sort  of 
huddled  together,  forrard;  and  for  two  hours  they  set  there, 
perfectly  still,  looking  steady  in  the  one  direction,  and  heaving  a 
sigh  once  in  a  while.  And  then,  here  comes  the  bar'l  again. 
She  took  up  her  old  place.  She  stayed  there  all  night;  nobody 
turned  in.  The  storm  come  on  again,  after  midnight.  It  got 
awful  dark;  the  rain  poured  down;  hail,  too;  the  thunder  boomed 
and  roared  and  bellowed;  the  wind  blowed  a  hurricane;  and  the 
lightning  spread  over  everything  in  big  sheets  of  glare,  and 
showed  the  whole  raft  as  plain  as  day;  and  the  river  lashed  up 
white  as  milk  as  far  as  you  could  see  for  miles,  and  there  was 
that  bar'l  jiggering  along,  same  as  ever.  The  captain  ordered 
the  watch  to  man  the  after  sweeps  for  a  crossing,  and  nobody 
would  go — no  more  sprained  ankles  for  them,  they  said.  They 
wouldn't  even  walk  aft.  Well,  then,  just  then  the  sky  split 
wide  open,  with  a  crash,  and  the  lightning  killed  two  men  of 
the  after  watch,  and  crippled  two  more.  Crippled  them  how, 
say  you?  Why,  sprained  their  ankles! 

"The  bar'l  left  in  the  dark  betwixt  lightnings,  toward  dawn. 
Well,  not  a  body  eat  a  bite  at  breakfast  that  morning.  After 
that  the  men  loafed  around,  in  twos  and  threes,  and  talked  low 
together.  But  none  of  them  herded  with  Dick  Allbright.  They 
all  give  him  the  cold  shake.  If  he  come  around  where  any  of 
the  men  was,  they  split  up  and  sidled  away.  They  wouldn't  man 
the  sweeps  with  him.  The  captain  had  all  the  skiffs  hauled  up 
on  the  raft,  alongside  of  his  wigwam,  and  wouldn't  let  the  dead 
men  be  took  ashore  to  be  planted ;  he  didn't  believe  a  man  that 
got  ashore  would  come  back;  and  he  was  right. 

"After  night  come,  you  could  see  pretty  plain  that  there  was 
going  to  be  trouble  if  that  bar'l  come  again;  there  was  such  a 
muttering  going  on.  A  good  many  wanted  to  kill  Dick  All- 
bright,  because  he'd  seen  the  bar'l  on  other  trips,  and  that  had 
an  ugly  look.  Some  wanted  to  put  him  ashore.  Some  said: 
'Let's  all  go  ashore  in  a  pile,  if  the  bar'l  comes  again.' 

"This  kind  of  whispers  was  still  going  on,  the  men  being 
bunched  together  forrard  watching  for  the  bar'l,  when  lo  and 
27 


MARK     TWAIN 

behold  you!  here  she  comes  again.  Down  she  comes,  slow  and 
steady,  and  settles  into  her  old  tracks.  You  could  'a'  heard  a 
pin  drop.  Then  up  comes  the  captain,  and  says: 

'"Boys,  don't  be  a  pack  of  children  and  fools;  I  don't  want 
this  bar'l  to  be  dogging  us  all  the  way  to  Orleans,  and  you  don't: 
Well,  then,  how's  the  best  way  to  stop  it?  Burn  it  up — that's 
the  way.  I'm  going  to  fetch  it  aboard,'  he  says.  And  before 
anybody  could  say  a  word,  in  he  went. 

"He  swum  to  it,  and  as  he  come  pushing  it  to  the  raft,  the  men 
spread  to  one  side.  But  the  old  man  got  it  aboard  and  busted 
in  the  head,  and  there  was  a  baby  in  it!  Yes,  sir;  a  stark-naked 
baby.  It  was  Dick  Allbright's  baby;  he  owned  up  and  said  so. 

"'Yes,'  he  says,  a-leaning  over  it,  'yes,  it  is  my  own  lamented 
darling,  my  poor  lost  Charles  William  Allbright  deceased,'  says 
he — for  he  could  curl  his  tongue  around  the  bulliest  words  in 
the  language  when  he  was  a  mind  to,  and  lay  them  before  you 
without  a  jint. started  anywheres.  Yes,  he  said,  he  used  to  live 
up  at  the  head  of  this  bend,  and  one  night  he  choked  his  child, 
which  was  crying,  not  intending  to  kill  it — which  was  prob'ly 
a  lie — and  then  he  was  scared,  and  buried  it  in  a  bar'l,  before  his 
wife  got  home,  and  off  he  went,  and  struck  the  northern  trail 
and  went  to  rafting;  and  this  was  the  third  year  that  the  bar'l 
had  chased  him.  He  said  the  bad  luck  always  begun  light,  and 
lasted  till  four  men  was  killed,  and  then  the  bar'l  didn't 
come  any  more  after  that.  He  said  if  the  men  would  stand  it 
one  more  night — and  was  a-going  on  like  that — but  the  men 
had  got  enough.  They  started  to  get  out  a  boat  to  take  him 
ashore  and  lynch  him,  but  he  grabbed  the  little  child  all  of  a 
sudden  and  jumped  overboard  with  it,  hugged  up  to  his  breast 
and  shedding  tears,  and  we  never  see  him  again  in  this  life,  poor 
old  suffering  soul,  nor  Charles  William  neither." 

"  Who  was  shedding  tears?  "  says  Bob;  "was  it  Allbright  or  the 
baby?" 

"Why,  Allbright,  of  course;  didn't  I  tell  you  the  baby  was 
dead?  Been  dead  three  years— how  could  it  cry?" 

"Well,  never  mind  how  it  could  cry — how  could  it  keep  all 
that  time?"  says  Davy.  "You  answer  me  that." 

" I  don't  know  how  it  done  it."  says  Ed.  " It  done  it,  though 
— that's  all  I  know  about  it." 

"Say — what  did  they  do  with  the  bar'l?"  says  the  Child  of 
Calamity. 

28 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

"Why,  they  hoVe  it  overboard,  and  it  sunk  like  a  chunk  of 
lead."  " 

"Edward,  did  the  child  look  like  it  was  choked?"  says  one. 

"Did  it  have  its  hair  parted?"  says  another. 

"What  was  the  brand  on  that  bar'l,  Eddy?"  says  a  fellow 
they  called  Bill. 

"Have  you  got  the  papers  for  them  statistics,  Edmund?" 
says  Jimmy. 

"Say,  Edwin,  was  you  one  of  the  men  that  was  killed  by  the 
lightning?"  says  Davy. 

"Him?  Oh,  no!  he  was  both  of  'em,"  says  Bob.  Then  they 
all  haw-hawed. 

"Say,  Edward,  don't  you  reckon  you'd  better  take  a  pill? 
You  look  bad — don't  you  feel  pale?"  says  the  Child  of  Calamity. 

"Oh,  come,  now,  Eddy,"  says  Jimmy,  "show  up;  you  must 
'a'  kept  part  of  that  bar'l  to  prove  the  thing  by.  Show  us  the 
bung-hole — do — and  we'll  all  believe  you." 

"Say,  boys,"  says  Bill,  "less  divide  it  up.  Thar's  thirteen  of 
us.  I  can  swaller  a  thirteenth  of  the  yarn,  if  you  can  worry 
down  the  rest." 

Ed  got  up  mad  and  said  they  could  all  go  to  some  place  which 
he  ripped  out  pretty  savage,  and  then  walked  off  aft,  cussing  to 
himself,  and  they  yelling  and  jeering  at  him,  and  roaring  and 
laughing  so  you  could  hear  them  a  mile. 

"Boys,  we'll  split  a  watermelon  on  that,"  says  the  Child  of 
Calamity;  and  he  came  rummaging  around  in  the  dark  amongst 
the  shingle  bundles  where  I  was,  and  put  his  hand  on  me.  I 
was  warm  and  soft  and  naked;  so  he  says  "Ouch!"  and  jumped 
back. 

"  Fetch  a  lantern  or  a  chunk  of  fire  here,  boys— there's  a  snake 
here  as  big  as  a  cow!" 

So  they  run  there  with  a  lantern,  and  crowded  up  and  looked 
in  on  me. 

"Come  out  of  that,  you  beggar!"  says  one. 

"Who  are  you?"  says  another. 

"What  are  you  after  here?  Speak  up  prompt,  or  overboard 
you  go." 

"Snake  him  out,  boys.     Snatch  him  out  by  the  heels." 

I  began  to  beg,  and  crept  out  amongst  them  trembling.  They 
looked  me  over,  wondering,  and  the  Child  of  Calamity  says: 

' '  A  cussed  thief !  Lend  a  hand  and  less  heave  him  overboard  1 ' ' 
29 


MARK    TWAIN 

"No,"  says  Big  Bob,  "less  get  out  the  paint-pot  and  paint  him 
a  sky-blue  all  over  from  head  to  heel,  and  then  heave  him  over." 

"Good!  that's  it.     Go  for  the  paint,  Jimmy." 

When  the  paint  come,  and  Bob  took  the  brush  and  was  just 
going  to  begin,  the  others  laughing  and  rubbing  their  hands,  I 
begun  to  cry,  and  that  sort  of  worked  on  Davy,  and  he 
says: 

"'Vast  there.  He's  nothing  but  a  cub.  I'll  paint  the  man 
that  teches  him!" 

So  I  looked  around  on  them,  and  some  of  them  grumbled  and 
growled,  and  Bob  put  down  the  paint,  and  the  others  didn't 
take  it  up. 

"Come  here  to  the  fire,  and  less  see  what  you're  up  to  here," 
says  Davy.  "Now  set  down  there  and  give  an  account  of 
yourself.  How  long  have  you  been  aboard  here?" 

"Not  over  a  quarter  of  a  minute,  sir,"  says  I. 

"How  did  you  get  dry  so  quick?" 

"I  don't  know,  sir.     I'm  always  that  way,  mostly." 

"Oh,  you  are,  are  you?    What's  your  name?" 

I  warn't  going  to  tell  my  name.  I  didn't  know  what  to  say, 
so  I  just  says: 

"Charles  William  Allbright,  sir." 

Then  they  roared — the  whole  crowd;  and  I  was  mighty  glad 
I  said  that,  because,  maybe,  laughing  would  get  them  in  a 
better  humor. 

When  they  got  done  laughing,  Davy  says: 

"It  won't  hardly  do,  Charles  William.  You  couldn't  have 
gvowed  this  much  in  five  year,  and  you  was  a  baby  when  you 
come  out  of  the  bar'l,  you  know,  and  dead  at  that.  Come,  now, 
tell  a  straight  story,  and  nobody  '11  hurt  you,  if  you  ain't  up  to 
anything  wrong.  What  is  your  name?" 

"Aleck  Hopkins,  sir.     Aleck  James  Hopkins." 

'''Well,  Aleck,  where  did  you  come  from,  here?" 

"From  a  trading-scow.  She  lays  up  the  bend  yonder.  I  was 
born  on  her.  Pap  has  traded  up  and  down  here  all  hisjlife;  and 
he  told  me  to  swim  off  here,  because  when  you  went  by  he  said 
he  would  like  to  get  some  of  you  to  speak  to  a  Mr.  Jonas  Turner, 
in  Cairo,  and  tell  him — " 

"Oh,  come!" 

"Yes,  sir,  it's  as  true  as  the  world.    Pap  he  says — " 

"Oh,  your  grandmother!" 

30 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

They  all  laughed,  and  I  tried  again  to  talk,  but  they  broke  in 
on  me  and  stopped  me. 

"Now,  looky-here,"  says  Davy;  "you're  scared,  and  so  you 
talk  wild.  Honest,  now,  do  you  live  in  a  scow,  or  is  it  a  lie?" 

"Yes,  sir,  in  a  trading-scow.  She  lays  up  at  the  head  of  the 
bend.  But  I  warn't  born  in  her.  It's  our  first  trip." 

"Now  you're  talking!  What  did  you  come  aboard  here 
for?  To  steal?" 

"No,  sir,  I  didn't.  It  was  only  to  get  a  ride  on  the  raft. 
All  boys  does  that." 

"Well,  I  know  that.     But  what  did  you  hide  for?" 

"Sometimes  they  drive  the  boys  off." 

"So  they  do.  They  might  steal.  Looky-here;  if  we  let  you 
off  this  time,  will  you  keep  out  of  these  kind  of  scrapes  here- 
after?" 

"  'Deed  I  will,  boss.    You  try  me." 

"All  right,  then.  You  ain't  but  little  ways  from  shore. 
Overboard  with  you,  and  don't  you  make  a  fool  of  yourself 
another  time  this  way.  Blast  it,  boy,  some  raftsmen  would 
rawhide  you  till  you  were  black  and  blue!" 

I  didn't  wait  to  kiss  good-by,  but  went  overboard  and  broke 
for  shore.  When  Jim  come  along  by  and  by,  the  big  raft  was 
away  out  of  sight  around  the  point.  I  swum  out  and  got  aboard, 
and  was  mighty  glad  to  see  home  again. 

The  boy  did  not  get  the  information  he  was  after, 
but  his  adventure  has  furnished  the  glimpse  of  the 
departed  raftsman  and  keelboatman  which  I  desire 
to  offer  in  this  place. 

I  now  come  to  a  phase  of  the  Mississippi  River  life 
of  the  flush  times  of  steamboating,  which  seems  to  me 
to  warrant  full  examination — the  marvelous  science  of 
piloting,  as  displayed  there.  I  believe  there  has  beep 
nothing  like  it  elsewhere  in  the  world. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE    BOYS'    AMBITION 

WHEN  I  was  a  boy,  there  was  but  one  perma- 
nent ambition  among  my  comrades  in  our 
village1  on  the  west  bank  of  the  Mississippi  River. 
That  was,  to  be  a  steafnboatman.  We  had  transient 
ambitions  of  other  sorts,  but  they  were  only  transient. 
When  a  circus  came  and  went,  it  left  us  all  burning 
to  become  clowns ;  the  first  negro  minstrel  show  that 
ever  came  to  our  section  left  us  all  suffering  to  try 
that  kind  of  life;  now  and  then  we  had  a  hope  that, 
if  we  lived  and  were  good,  God  would  permit  us  to 
be  pirates.  These  ambitions  faded  out,  each  in  its 
turn;  but  the  ambition  to  be  a  steamboatman 
always  remained: 

Once  a  day  a  cheap,  gaudy  packet  arrived  upward 
from  St.  Louis,  and  another  downward  from  Keokuk. 
Before  these  events,  the  day  was  glorious  with  ex- 
pectancy; after  them,  the  day  was  a  dead  and 
empty  thing.  Not  only  thfe  boys,  but  the  whole 
village,  felt  this.  '  "After  all  these  years  I  can  picture 
that  old  time  to  myself  now,  just  as  it  was  then :  the 
white  town  drowsing  in  the  sunshine  of  a  summer's 
morning;  the  streets  empty,  or  pretty  nearly  so; 
one  or  two  clerks  sitting  in  front  of  the  Water  Street 

1  Hannibal,  Missouri. 
32 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

stores,  with  their  splint -bottomed  chairs  tilted  back 
against  the  walls,  chins  on  breasts,  hats  slouched  over 
their  faces,  asleep  —  with  shingle  -  shavings  enough 
around  to  show  what  broke  them  down;  a  sow  and 
a  litter  of  pigs  loafing  along  the  sidewalk,  doing  a 
good  business  in  watermelon  rinds  and  seeds;  two 
or  three  lonely  little  freight  piles  scattered  about 
the  "levee";  a  pile  of  "skids"  on  the  slope  of  the 
stone-paved  wharf,  and  the  fragrant  town  drunkard 
asleep  in  the  shadow  of  them;  two  or  three  wood 
flats  at  the  head  of  the  wharf,  but  nobody  to  listen 
to  the  peaceful  lapping  of  the  wavelets  against  them ; 
the  great  Mississippi,  the  majestic,  the  magnifi- 
cent Mississippi,  rolling  its  mile-wide  tide  along, 
shining  in  the  sun;  the  dense  forest  away  on  the 
other  side;  the  "point"  above  the  town,  and  the 
"point"  below,  bounding  the  river-glimpse  and  turn- 
ing it  into  a  sort  of  sea,  and  withal  a  very  still  and 
brilliant  and  lonely  one1.'  Presently  a  film  of  dark 
smoke  appears  above  one  of  those  remote  "points"; 
instantly  a  negro  drayman,  famous  for  his  quick 
eye  and  prodigious  voice,  lifts  up  the  cry,  "S-t-e-a-m- 
boat  a-comin'!"  and  the  scene  changes!  The  town 
drunkard  stirs,  the  clerks  wake  up,  a  furious  clatter 
of  drays  follows,  everyjiouse  and  store  pours  out  a 
human  contribution,  and  all  in  a  twinkling  the  dead 
town  is  alive  and  moving.  Drays,  carts,  men,  boys, 
all  go  hurrying  from  many  quarters  to  a  common 
center,  the  wharf.  Assembled  there,  the  people 
fasten  their  eyes  upon  the  coming  boat  as  upon  a 
wonder  they  are  seeing  for  the  first  time.  And  the 
boat  is  rather  a  handsome  sight,  too.  She  is  long 
33 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  sharp  and  trim  and  pretty;  she  has  two  tall, 
fancy-topped  chimneys,  with  a  gilded  device  of  some 
kind  swung  between  them;  a  fanciful  pilot-house, 
all  glass  and  "gingerbread,"  perched  on  top  ojf  the 
"texas"  deck  behind  them;  the  paddle-boxes  are 
gorgeous  with  a  picture  or  with  gilded  rays  above 
the  boat's  name;  the  boiler-deck,  the  hurricane-deck, 
and  the  texas  deck  are  fenced  and  ornamented  with 
clean  white  railings;  there  is  a  flag  gallantly  flying 
from  the  jack-staff;  the  furnace  doors  are  open  and 
the  fires  glaring  bravely;  the  upper  decks  are  black 
with  passengers;  the  captain  stands  by  the  big  bell, 
calm,  imposing,  the  envy  of  all;  great  volumes  of 
the  blackest  smoke  are  rolling  and  tumbling  out  of 
the  chimneys — a  husbanded  grandeur  created  with 
a  bit  of  pitch-pine  just  before  arriving  at  a  town; 
the  crew  are  grouped  on  the  forecastle;  the  broad 
stage  is  run  far  out  over  the  port  bow,  and  an  envied 
deck-hand  stands  picturesquely  on  the  end  of  it  with 
a  coil  of  rope  in  his  hand ;  the  pent  steam  is-  scream- 
ing through  the  gauge-cocks;  the  captain  lifts  his 
hand,  a  bell  rings,  the  wheels  stop;  then  they  turn 
back,  churning  the  water  to  foam,  and  the  steamer 
is  at  rest.  Then  such  a  scramble  as  there  is  to  get 
aboard,  and  to  get  ashore,  and  to  take  in  freight 
and  to  discharge  freight,  all  at  one  and  the  same 
time;  and  such  a  yelling  and  cursing  as  the  mates 
facilitate  it  all  with !  Ten  minutes  later  the  steamer 
is  under  way  again,  with  no  flag  on  the  jack-staff 
and  no  black  smoke  issuing  from  the  chimneys. 
After  ten  more  minutes  the  town  is  dead  again,  and 
the  town  drunkard  asleep  by  the  skids  once  more. 
34 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

My  father  was  a  justice  of  the  peace,  and  I  sup- 
posed he  possessed  the  power  of  life  and  death  over 
all  men,  and  could  hang  anybody  that  offended  him. 
This  was  distinction  enough  for  me  as  a  general 
thing;  but  the  desire  to  be  a  steamboatman  kept 
intruding,  nevertheless.  I  first  wanted  to  be  a 
cabin-boy,  so  that  I  could  come  out  with  a  white 
apron  on  and  shake  a  table-cloth  over  the  side, 
where  all  my  old  comrades  could  see  me;  later  I 
thought  I  would  rather  be  the  deck-hand  who  stood 
on  the  end  of  the  stage-plank  with  the  coil  of  rope 
in  his  hand,  because  he  was  particularly  conspicuous. 
But  these  were  only  day-dreams — they  were  too 
heavenly  to  be  contemplated  as  real  possibilities. 
By  and  by  one  of  our  boys  went  away.  He  was  not 
heard  of  for  a  long  time.  At  last  he  turned  up  as 
apprentice  engineer  or  "striker"  on  a  steamboat. 
This  thing  shook  the  bottom  out  of  all  my  Sunday- 
school  teachings.  That  boy  had  been  notoriously 
worldly,  and  I  just  the  reverse;  yet  he  was  exalted 
to  this  eminence,  and  I  left  in  obscurity  and  misery. 
There  was  nothing  generous  about  this  fellow  in  his 
greatness.  He  would  always  manage  to  have  a 
rusty  bolt  to  scrub  while  his  boat  tarried  at  our  town, 
and  he  would  sit  on  the  inside  guard  and  scrub  it, 
where  we  all  could  see  him  and  envy  him  and  loathe 
him.  And  whenever  his  boat  was  laid  up  he  would 
come  home  and  swell  around  the  town  in  his  blackest 
and  greasiest  clothes,  so  that  nobody  could  help  re- 
membering that  he  was  a  steamboatman;  and  he 
used  all  sorts  of  steamboat  technicalities  in  his  talk, 
as  if  he  were  so  used  to  them  that  he  forgot  common 
35 


MARK     TWAIN 

people  could  not  understand  them.  He  would  speak 
of  the  "labboard"  side  of  a  horse  in  an  easy,  natural 
way  that  would  make  one  wish  he  was  dead.  And  he 
was  always  talking  about  "St.  Looy"  like  an  old 
citizen;  he  would  refer  casually  to  occasions  when 
he  was  "coming  down  Fourth  Street,"  or  when  he 
was  "passing  by  the  Planter's  House,"  or  when  there 
was  a  fire  and  he  took  a  turn  on  the  brakes  of  "the 
old  Big  Missouri";  and  then  he  would  go  on  and  lie 
about  how  many  towns  the  size  of  ours  were  burned 
down  there  that  day.  Two  or  three  of  the  boys  had 
long  been  persons  of  consideration  among  us  because 
they  had  been  to  St.  Louis  once  and  had  a  vague 
general  knowledge  of  its  wonders,  but  the  day  of 
their  glory  was  over  now.  They  lapsed  into  a 
humble  silence,  and  learned  to  disappear  when  the 
ruthless  "cub "-engineer  approached.  This  fellow 
had  money,  too,  and  hair-oil.  Also  an  ignorant 
silver  watch  and  a  showy  brass  watch-chain.  He 
wore  a  leather  belt  and  used  no  suspenders.  If  ever 
a  youth  was  cordially  admired  and  hated  by  his 
comrades,  this  one  was.  No  girl  could  withstand 
his  charms.  He  "cut  out"  every  boy  in  the  village. 
When  his  boat  blew  up  at  last,  it  diffused  a  tranquil 
contentment  among  us  such  as  we  had  not  known 
for  months.  But  when  he  came  home  the  next  week, 
alive,  renowned,  and  appeared  in  church  all  battered 
up  and  bandaged,  a  shining  hero,  stared  at  and  won- 
dered over  by  everybody,  it  seemed  to  us  that  the 
partiality  of  Providence  for  an  undeserving  reptile 
had  reached  a  point  where  it  was  open  to  criticism. 
This  creature's  career  could  produce  but  one  result, 
36 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

and  it  speedily  followed.  Boy  after  boy  managed  to 
get  on  the  river.  The  minister's  son  became  an 
engineer.  The  doctor's  and  the  postmaster's  sons 
became  "mud  clerks";  the  wholesale  liquor  dealer's 
son  became  a  barkeeper  on  a  boat ;  four  sons  of  the 
chief  merchant,  and  two  sons  of  the  county  judge, 
became  pilots.  Pilot  was  the  grandest  position  of 
all.  The  pilot,  even  in  those  days  of  trivial  wages, 
had  a  princely  salary — from  a  hundred  and  fifty  to 
two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  month,  and  no  board 
to  pay.  Two  months  of  his  wages  would  pay  a 
preacher's  salary  for  a  year.  Now  some  of  us  were 
left  disconsolate.  We  could  not  get  on  the  river — 
at  least  our  parents  would  not  let  us. 

So,  by  and  by,  I  ran  away.  I  said  I  would  never 
come  home  again  till  I  was  a  pilot  and  could  come  in 
glory.  But  somehow  I  could  not  manage  it.  I  went 
meekly  aboard  a  few  of  the  boats  that  lay  packed 
together  like  sardines  at  the  long  St.  Louis  wharf,  and 
humbly  inquired  for  the  pilots,  but  got  only  a  cold 
shoulder  and  short  words  from  mates  and  clerks.  I 
had  to  make  the  best  of  this  sort  of  treatment  for  the 
time  being,  but  I  had  comforting  day-dreams  of  a 
future  when  I  should  be  a  great  and  honored  pilot, 
with  plenty  of  money,  and  could  kill  some  of  these 
mates  and  clerks  and  pay  for  them. 


37 


94512 


CHAPTER  V 

I   WANT  TO    BE    A    CUB-PILOT 

MONTHS  afterward  the  hope  within  me  strug- 
gled  to  a  reluctant  death,  and  I  found  myself 
without  an  ambition.  But  I  was  ashamed  to  go 
home.  I  was  in  Cincinnati,  and  I  set  to  work  to  map 
out  a  new  career.  I  had  been  reading  about  the  re- 
cent exploration  of  the  river  Amazon  by  an  expedi- 
tion sent  out  by  our  government.  It  was  said  that 
the  expedition,  owing  to  difficulties,  had  not  thor- 
oughly explored  a  part  of  the  country  lying  about  the 
headwaters,  some  four  thousand  miles  from  the 
mouth  of  the  river.  It  was  only  about  fifteen  hun- 
dred miles  from  Cincinnati  to  New  Orleans,  where 
I  could  doubtless  get  a  ship.  I  had  thirty  dollars 
left ;  I  would  go  and  complete  the  exploration  of  the 
Amazon.  This  was  all  the  thought  I  gave  to  the 
subject.  I  never  was  great  in  matters  of  detail. 
I  packed  my  valise,  and  took  passage  on  an  ancient 
tub  called  the  Paul  Jones,  for  New  Orleans.  For 
the  sum  of  sixteen  dollars  I  had  the  scarred  and 
tarnished  splendors  of  "her"  main  saloon  prin- 
cipally to  myself,  for  she  was  not  a  creature  to 
attract  the  eye  of  wiser  travelers. 

When  we  presently  got  under  way  and  went  poking 
down  the  broad  Ohio,  I  became  a  new  being,  and  the 
38 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

subject  of  my  own  admiration.  I  was  a  traveler!  A 
word  never  had  tasted  so  good  in  my  mouth  before. 
I  had  an  exultant  sense  of  being  bound  for  mysterious 
lands  and  distant  climes  which  I  never  have  felt  in  so 
uplifting  a  degree  since.  I  was  in  such  a  glorified 
condition  that  all  ignoble  feelings  departed  out  of 
me,  and  I  was  able  to  look  down  and  pity  the  un- 
traveled  with  a  compassion  that  had  hardly  a  trace  of 
contempt  in  it.  Still,  when  we  stopped  at  villages 
and  wood-yards,  I  could  not  help  lolling  carelessly 
upon  the  railings  of  the  boiler-deck  to  enjoy  the 
envy  of  the  country  boys  on  the  bank.  If  they  did 
not  seem  to  discover  me,  I  presently  sneezed  to 
attract  their  attention,  or  moved  to  a  position  where 
they  could  not  help  seeing  me.  And  as  soon  as  I 
knew  they  saw  me  I  gaped  and  stretched,  and  gave 
other  signs  of  being  mightily  bored  with  traveling. 

I  kept  my  hat  off  all  the  time,  and  stayed  where  the 
wind  and  the  sun  could  strike  me,  because  I  wanted  to 
get  the  bronzed  and  weather-beaten  look  of  an  old 
traveler.  Before  the  second  day  was  half  gone  I  ex- 
perienced a  joy  which  filled  me  with  the  purest  grati- 
tude ;  for  I  saw  that  the  skin  had  begun  to  blister  and 
peel  off  my  face  and  neck.  I  wished  that  the  boys 
and  girls  at  home  could  see  me  now. 

We  reached  Louisville  in  time — at  least  the  neigh- 
borhood of  it.  We  stuck  hard  and  fast  on  the  rocks 
in  the  middle  of  the  river,  and  lay  there  four  days.  I 
was  now  beginning  to  feel  a  strong  sense  of  being 
a  part  of  the  boat's  family,  a  sort  of  infant  son  to  the 
captain  and  younger  brother  to  the  officers.  There  is 
no  estimating  the  pride  I  took  in  this  grandeur,  or  the 
39 


MARK     TWAIN 

affection  that  began  to  swell  and  grow  in  me  for  those 
people.  I  could  not  know  how  the  lordly  steamboat- 
man  scorns  that  sort  of  presumption  in  a  mere  lands- 
man. I  particularly  longed  to  acquire  the  least  trifle 
of  notice  from  the  big  stormy  mate,  and  I  was  on  the 
alert  for  an  opportunity  to  do  him  a  service  to  that 
end.  It  came  at  last.  The  riotous  pow-wow  of  set- 
ting a  spar  was  going  on  down  on  the  forecastle,  and 
I  went  down  there  and  stood  around  in  the  way — or 
mostly  skipping  out  of  it — till  the  mate  suddenly 
roared  a  general  order  for  somebody  to  bring  him  a 
capstan  bar.  I  sprang  to  his  side  and  said:  "Tell 
me  where  it  is — I'll  fetch  it!" 

If  a  rag-picker  had  offered  to  do  a  diplomatic  ser- 
vice for  the  Emperor  of  Russia,  the  monarch  could 
not  have  been  more  astounded  than  the  mate  was. 
He  even  stopped  swearing.  He  stood  and  stared 
down  at  me.  It  took  him  ten  seconds  to  scrape  his 
disjointed  remains  together  again.  Then  he  said 

impressively:  "Well,  if  this  don't  beat  h 1!"  and 

turned  to  his  work  with  the  air  of  a  man  who  had 
been  confronted  with  a  problem  too  abstruse  for 
solution. 

I  crept  away,  and  courted  solitude  for  the  rest  of 
the  day.  I  did  not  go  to  dinner ;  I  stayed  away  from 
supper  until  everybody  else  had  finished.  I  did  not 
feel  so  much  like  a  member  of  the  boat's  family  now 
as  before.  However,  my  spirits  returned,  in  instal- 
ments, as  we  pursued  our  way  down  the  river.  I 
was  sorry  I  hated  the  mate  so,  because  it  was  not  in 
(young)  human  nature  not  to  admire  him.  He  was 
huge  and  muscular,  his  face  was  bearded  and  whis- 
40 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

kered  all  over;  he  had  a  red  woman  and  a  blue 
woman  tattooed  on  his  right  arm — one  on  each  side 
of  a  blue  anchor  with  a  red  rope  to  it;  and  in  the 
matter  of  profanity  he  was  sublime.  When  he  was 
getting  out  cargo  at  a  landing,  I  was  always  where  I 
could  see  and  hear.  He  felt  all  the  majesty  of  his 
great  position,  and  made  the  world  feel  it,  too. 
When  he  gave  even  the  simplest  order,  he  discharged 
it  like  a  blast  of  lightning,  and  sent  a  long,  reverber- 
ating peal  of  profanity  thundering  after  it.  I  could 
not  help  contrasting  the  way  in  which  the  average 
landsman  would  give  an  order  with  the  mate's  way 
of  doing  it.  If  the  landsman  should  wish  the  gang- 
plank moved  a  foot  farther  forward,  he  would  prob- 
ably say:  "James,  or  William,  one  of  you  push  that 
plank  forward,  please";  but  put  the  mate  in  his 
place,  and  he  would  roar  out :  ' '  Here,  now,  start  that 
gang-plank  for'ard!  Lively,  now!  What  're  you 
about!  Snatch  it!  snatch  it!  There!  there!  Aft 
again!  aft  again!  Don't  you  hear  me?  Dash  it  to 
dash !  are  you  going  to  sleep  over  it !  '  Vast  heaving. 
'Vast  heaving,  I  tell  you!  Going  to  heave  it  clear 
astern?  WHERE  're  you  going  with  that  barrel! 
for'ard  with  it  'fore  I  make  you  swallow  it,  you 
dash-dash-dash-das/^d  split  between  a  tired  mud- 
turtle  and  a  crippled  hearse-horse!" 

I  wished  I  could  talk  like  that. 

When  the  soreness  of  my  adventure  with  the  mate 
had  somewhat  worn  off,  I  began  timidly  to  make  up 
to  the  humblest  official  connected  with  the  boat — the 
night  watchman.  He  snubbed  my  advances  at  first, 
but  I  presently  ventured  to  offer  him  a  new  chalk 


MARK    TWAIN 

pipe,  and  that  softened  him.  So  he  allowed  me  to 
sit  with  him  by  the  big  bell  on  the  hurricane-deck, 
and  in  time  he  melted  into  conversation.  He  could 
not  well  have  helped  it,  I  hung  with  such  homage  on 
his  words  and  so  plainly  showed  that  I  felt  honored 
by  his  notice.  He  told  me  the  names  of  dim  capes 
and  shadowy  islands  as  we  glided  by  them  in  the 
solemnity  of  the  night,  under  the  winking  stars,  and 
by  and  by  got  to  talking  about  himself.  He  seemed 
over-sentimental  for  a  man  whose  salary  was  six 
dollars  a  week — or  rather  he  might  have  seemed  so  to 
an  older  person  than  I.  But  I  drank  in  his  words 
hungrily,  and  with  a  faith  that  might  have  moved 
mountains  if  it  had  been  applied  judiciously.  What 
was  it  to  me  that  he  was  soiled  and  seedy  and 
fragrant  with  gin?  What  was  it  to  me  that  his 
grammar  was  bad,  his  construction  worse,  and  his 
profanity  so  void  of  art  that  it  was  an  element  of 
weakness  rather  than  strength  in  his  conversation? 
He  was  a  wronged  man,  a  man  who  had  seen  trouble, 
and  that  was  enough  for  me.  As  he  mellowed  into 
his  plaintive  history  his  tears  dripped  upon  the 
lantern  in  his  lap,  and  I  cried,  too,  from  sympathy. 
He  said  he  was  the  son  of  an  English  nobleman — 
either  an  earl  or  an  alderman,  he  could  not  remember 
which,  but  believed  was  both ;  his  father,  the  noble- 
man, loved  him,  but  his  mother  hated  him  from  the 
cradle;  and  so  while  he  was  still  a  little  boy  he  was 
sent  to  "one  of  them  old,  ancient  colleges" — he 
couldn't  remember  which;  and  by  and  by  his  father 
died  and  his  mother  seized  the  property  and  "shook" 
him,  as  he  phrased  it.  After  his  mother  shook  him, 
42 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

members  of  the  nobility  with  whom  he  was  ac- 
quainted used  their  influence  to  get  him  the  position 
of  "loblolly-boy  in  a  ship";  and  from  that  point  my 
watchman  threw  off  all  trammels  of  date  and  locality 
and  branched  out  into  a  narrative  that  bristled  all 
along  with  incredible  adventures;  a  narrative  that 
was  so  reeking  with  bloodshed,  and  so  crammed  with 
hair-breadth  escapes  and  the  most  engaging  and  un- 
conscious personal  villainies,  that  I  sat  speechless,  en- 
joying, shuddering,  wondering,  worshiping. 

It  was  a  sore  blight  to  find  out  afterward  that  he 
was  a  low,  vulgar,  ignorant,  sentimental,  half- 
witted humbug,  an  untraveled  native  of  the  wilds  of 
Illinois,  who  had  absorbed  wildcat  literature  and 
appropriated  its  marvels,  until  in  time  he  had 
woven  odds  and  ends  of  the  mess  into  this  yarn,  and 
then  gone  on  telling  it  to  fledglings  like  me,  until 
he  had  come  to  believe  it  himself. 


CHAPTER  VI 
A  CUB-PILOT'S  EXPERIENCE 

WHAT  with  lying  on  the  rocks  four  days  at 
Louisville,  and  some  other  delays,  the  poor 
old  Paul  Jones  fooled  away  about  two  weeks  in  mak- 
ing the  voyage  from  Cincinnati  to  New  Orleans. 
This  gave  me  a  chance  to  get  acquainted  with  one  of 
the  pilots,  and  he  taught  me  how  to  steer  the  boat, 
and  thus  made  the  fascination  of  river  life  more 
potent  than  ever  for  me. 

It  also  gave  me  a  chance  to  get  acquainted  with  a 
youth  who  had  taken  deck  passage — more's  the  pity; 
for  he  easily  borrowed  six  dollars  of  me  on  a  promise 
to  return  to  the  boat  and  pay  it  back  to  me  the  day 
after  we  should  arrive.  But  he  probably  died  or  for- 
got, for  he  never  came.  It  was  doubtless  the  former, 
since  he  had  said  his  parents  were  wealthy,  and  he 
only  traveled  deck  passage  because  it  was  cooler.1 

I  soon  discovered  two  things.  One  was  that  a 
vessel  would  not  be  likely  to  sail  for  the  mouth  of  the 
Amazon  under  ten  or  twelve  years ;  and  the  other  was 
that  the  nine  or  ten  dollars  still  left  in  my  pocket 
would  not  suffice  for  so  impossible  an  exploration  as 
I  had  planned,  even  if  I  could  afford  to  wait  for  a  ship. 
Therefore  it  followed  that  I  must  contrive  a 

1  "Deck"  passage — i.  e.,  steerage  passage. 
44 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

career.  The  Paul  Jones  was  now  bound  for  St. 
Louis.  I  planned  a  siege  against  my  pilot,  and  at 
the  end  of  three  hard  days  he  surrendered.  He 
agreed  to  teach  me  the  Mississippi  River  from  New 
Orleans  to  St.  Louis  for  five  hundred  dollars,  payable 
out  of  the  first  wages  I  should  receive  after  graduat- 
ing. I  entered  upon  the  small  enterprise  of  "learn- 
ing" twelve  or  thirteen  hundred  miles  of  the  great 
Mississippi  River  with  the  easy  confidence  of  my 
time  of  life.  If  I  had  really  known  what  I  was  about 
to  require  of  my  faculties,  I  should  not  have  had  the 
courage  to  begin.  I  supposed  that  all  a  pilot  had  to 
do  was  to  keep  his  boat  in  the  river,  and  I  did  not 
consider  that  that  could  be  much  of  a  trick,  since  it 
was  so  wide. 

The  boat  backed  out  from  New  Orleans  at  four  in 
the  afternoon,  and  it  was  "our  watch"  until  eight. 
Mr.  Bixby,  my  chief,  "straightened  her  up,"  plowed 
her  along  past  the  sterns  of  the  other  boats  that  lay 
at  the  Levee,  and  then  said,  "Here,  take  her;  shave 
those  steamships  as  close  as  you'd  peel  an  apple." 
I  took  the  wheel,  and  my  heartbeat  fluttered  up  into 
the  hundreds;  for  it  seemed  to  me  that  we  were 
about  to  scrape  the  side  off  every  ship  in  the  line, 
we  were  so  close.  I  held  my  breath  and  began  to 
claw  the  boat  away  from  the  danger ;  and  I  had  my 
own  opinion  of  the  pilot  who  had  known  no  better 
than  to  get  us  into  such  peril,  but  I  was  too  wise  to 
express  it.  In  half  a  minute  I  had  a  wide  margin 
of  safety  intervening  between  the  Paul  Jones  and  the 
ships;  and  within  ten  seconds  more  I  was  set  aside 
in  disgrace,  and  Mr.  Bixby  was  going  into  danger 
45 


MARK     TWAIN 

again  and  flaying  me  alive  with  abuse  of  my  coward- 
ice. I  was  stung,  but  I  was  obliged  to  admire  the 
easy  confidence  with  which  my  chief  loafed  from  side 
to  side  of  his  wheel,  and  trimmed  the  ships  so 
closely  that  disaster  seemed  ceaselessly  imminent. 
When  he  had  cooled  a  little  he  told  me  that  the 
easy  water  was  close  ashore  and  the  current  outside, 
and  therefore  we  must  hug  the  bank,  up-stream,  to 
get  the  benefit  of  the  former,  and  stay  well  out, 
down-stream,  to  take  advantage  of  the  latter.  In 
my  own  mind  I  resolved  to  be  a  down-stream  pilot 
and  leave  the  up-streaming  to  people  dead  to  prudence. 

Now  and  then  Mr.  Bixby  called  my  attention  to 
certain  things.  Said  he,  "This  is  Six-Mile  Point." 
I  assented.  It  was  pleasant  enough  information,  but 
I  could  not  see  the  bearing  of  it.  I  was  not  conscious 
that  it  was  a  matter  of  any  interest  to  me.  Another 
time  he  said,  "This  is  Nine-Mile  Point."  Later  he 
said,  "This  is  Twelve-Mile  Point."  They  were  all 
about  level  with  the  water's  edge;  they  all  looked 
about  alike  to  me;  they  were  monotonously  unpic- 
turesque.  I  hoped  Mr.  Bixby  would  change  the  sub- 
ject. But  no;  he  would  crowd  up  around  a  point, 
hugging  the  shore  with  affection,  and  then  say: 
"The  slack  water  ends  here,  abreast  this  bunch  of 
China  trees;  now  we  cross  over."  So  he  crossed 
over.  He  gave  me  the  wheel  once  or  twice,  but  I 
had  no  luck.  I  either  came  near  chipping  off  the 
edge  of  a  sugar-plantation,  or  I  yawed  too  far  from 
shore,  and  so  dropped  back  into  disgrace  again  and 
got  abused. 

The  watch  was  ended  at  last,  and  we  took  supper 
46 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

and  went  to  bed.     At  midnight  the  glare  of  a  lantern 
shone  in  my  eyes,  and  the  night  watchman  said : 

"Come,  turn  out!" 

And  then  he  left.  I  could  not  understand  this 
extraordinary  procedure ;  so  I  presently  gave  up  try- 
ing to,  and  dozed  off  to  sleep.  Pretty  soon  the 
watchman  was  back  again,  and  this  time  he  was 
gruff.  I  was  annoyed.  I  said: 

"What  do  you  want  to  come  bothering  around 
here  in  the  middle  of  the  night  for  ?  Now,  as  like  as 
not,  I'll  not  get  to  sleep  again  to-night." 

The  watchman  said : 

"Well,  if  this  ain't  good,  I'm  blessed." 

The  "off- watch"  was  just  turning  in,  and  I  heard 
some  brutal  laughter  from  them,  and  such  remarks 
as  "Hello,  watchman!  ain't  the  new  cub  turned 
out  yet?  He's  delicate,  likely.  Give  him  some 
sugar  in  a  rag,  and  send  for  the  chambermaid  to  sing 
'Rock-a-by  Baby,'  to  him." 

About  this  time  Mr.  Bixby  appeared  on  the  scene. 
Something  like  a  minute  later  I  was  climbing  the 
pilot-house  steps  with  some  of  my  clothes  on  and  the 
rest  in  my  arms.  Mr.  Bixby  was  close  behind,  com- 
menting. Here  was  something  fresh — this  thing  of 
getting  up  in  the  middle  of  the  night  to  go  to  work. 
It  was  a  detail  in  piloting  that  had  never  occurred  to 
me  at  all.  I  knew  that  boats  ran  all  night,  but  some- 
how I  had  never  happened  to  reflect  that  somebody 
had  to  get  up  out  of  a  warm  bed  to  run  them.  I 
began  to  fear  that  piloting  was  not  quite  so  romantic 
as  I  had  imagined  it  was;  there  was  something  very 
real  and  worklike  about  this  new  phase  of  it. 
47 


MARK     TWAIN 

It  was  a  rather  dingy  night,  although  a  fair  num- 
ber of  stars  were  out.  The  big  mate  was  at  the 
wheel,  and  he  had  the  old  tub  pointed  at  a  star  and 
was  holding  her  straight  up  the  middle  of  the  river. 
The  shores  on  either  hand  were  not  much  more  than 
half  a  mile  apart,  but  they  seemed  wonderfully  far 
away  and  ever  so  vague  and  indistinct.  The  mate 
said: 

"We've  got  to  land  at  Jones's  plantation,  sir." 

The  vengeful  spirit  in  me  exulted.  I  said  to  my- 
self, "I  wish  you  joy  of  your  job,  Mr.  Bixby;  you'll 
have  a  good  time  finding  Mr.  Jones's  plantation  such 
a  night  as  this;  and  I  hope  you  never  will  find  it  as 
long  as  you  live." 

Mr.  Bixby  said  to  the  mate : 

"Upper  end  of  the  plantation,  or  the  lower?" 

"Upper." 

"I  can't  do  it.  The  stumps  there  are  out  of 
water  at  this  stage.  It's  no  great  distance  to  the 
lower,  and  you'll  have  to  get  along  with  that." 

"All  right,  sir.  If  Jones  don't  like  it,  he'll  have  to 
lump  it,  I  reckon." 

And  then  the  mate  left.  My  exultation  began  to 
cool  and  my  wonder  to  come  up.  Here  was  a  man 
who  not  only  proposed  to  find  this  plantation  on  such 
a  night,  but  to  find  either  end  of  it  you  preferred.  I 
dreadfully  wanted  to  ask  ^  question,  but  I  was 
carrying  about  as  many  short  answers  as  my  cargo- 
room  would  admit  of,  so  I  held  my  peace.  All  I 
desired  to  ask  Mr.  Bixby  was  the  simple  question 
whether  he  was  ass  enough  to  really  imagine  he  was 
going  to  find  that  plantation  on  a  night  when  all 
48 


LIFE     OJN     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

plantations  were  exactly  alike  and  all  of  the  same 
color.  But  I  held  in.  I  used  to  have  fine  inspira- 
tions of  prudence  in  those  days. 

Mr.  Bixby  made  for  the  shore  and  soon  was  scrap- 
ing it,  just  the  same  as  if  it  had  been  daylight. 
And  not  only  that,  but  singing: 

"Father  in  heaven,  the  day  is  declining,"  etc. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  I  had  put  my  life  in  the  keep- 
ing of  a  peculiarly  reckless  outcast.  Presently  he 
turned  on  me  and  said: 

"What's  the  name  of  the  first  point  above  New 
Orleans?" 

I  was  gratified  to  be  able  to  answer  promptly,  and 
I  did.  I  said  I  didn't  know. 

"Don't  know?" 

This  manner  jolted  me.  I  was  down  at  the  foot 
again,  in  a  moment.  But  I  had  to  say  just  what 
I  had  said  before. 

"Well,  you're  'a  smart  one!"  said  Mr.  Bixby. 
"What's  the  name  of  the  next  point?" 

Once  more  I  didn't  know. 

"Well,  this  beats  anything.  Tell  me  the  name  of 
any  point  or  place  I  told  you." 

I  studied  awhile  and  decided  that  I  couldn't. 

"Look  here!  What  do  you  start  out  from,  above 
Twelve-Mile  Point,  tc^  cross  over?" 

"I — I — don't  know." 

"You — you — don't  know?"  mimicking  my  drawl- 
ing manner  of  speech.  "What  do  you  know?'1 

"I — I — nothing,  for  certain." 

"By  the  great  Caesar's  ghost,  I  believe  you! 
49 


MARK     TWAIN 

You're  the  stupidest  dunderhead  I  ever  saw  or  ever 
heard  of,  so  help  me  Moses !  The  idea  of  you  being  a 
pilot — you!  Why,  you  don't  know  enough  to  pilot 
a  cow  down  a  lane." 

Oh,  but  his  wrath  was  up !  He  was  a  nervous  man, 
and  he  shuffled  from  one  side  of  his  wheel  to  the  other 
as  if  the  floor  was  hot.  He  would  boil  awhile  to  him- 
self, and  then  overflow  and  scald  me  again. 

' '  Look  here !  What  do  you  suppose  I  told  you  the 
names  of  those  points  for?" 

I  tremblingly  considered  a  moment,  and  then  the 
devil  of  temptation  provoked  me  to  say: 

"Well  to — to — be  entertaining,   I  thought." 

This  was  a  red  rag  to  the  bull.  He  raged  and 
stormed  so  (he  was  crossing  the  river  at  the  time) 
that  I  judged  it  made  him  blind,  because  he  ran  over 
the  steering-oar  of  a  trading-scow.  Of  course  the 
traders  sent  up  a  volley  of  red-hot  profanity.  Never 
was  a  man  so  grateful  as  Mr.  Bixby  was ;  because  he 
was  brimful,  and  here  were  subjects  who  could  talk 
back.  He  threw  open  a  window,  thrust  his  head  out, 
and  such  an  irruption  followed  as  I  never  had  heard 
before.  The  fainter  and  farther  away  the  scowmen's 
curses  drifted,  the  higher  Mr.  Bixby  lifted  his  voice 
and  the  weightier  his  adjectives  grew.  When  he 
closed  the  window  he  was  empty.  You  could  have 
drawn  a  seine  through  his  system  and  not  caught 
curses  enough  to  disturb  your  mother  with.  Pres- 
ently he  said  to  me  in  the  gentlest  way: 

"My  boy,  you  must  get  a  little  memorandum- 
book;  and  every  time  I  tell  you  a  thing,  put  it  down 
right  away.  There's  only  one  way  to  be  a  pilot,  and 
50 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

that  is  to  get  this  entire  river  by  heart.  You  have 
to  know  it  just  like  ABC." 

That  was  a  dismal  revelation  to  me;  for  my 
memory  was  never  loaded  with  anything  but  blank 
cartridges.  However,  I  did  not  feel  discouraged 
long.  I  judged  that  it  was  best  to  make  some  allow- 
ances, for  doubtless  Mr.  Bixby  was  "stretching." 
Presently  he  pulled  a  rope  and  struck  a  few  strokes 
on  the  big  bell.  The  stars  were  all  gone  now,  and 
the  night  was  as  black  as  ink.  I  could  hear  the 
wheels  churn  along  the  bank,  but  I  was  not  entirely 
certain  that  I  could  see  the  shore.  The  voice  of  the 
invisible  watchman  called  up  from  the  hurricane- 
deck: 

"What's  this,  sir?" 

"Jones's  plantation." 

I  said  to  myself,  "I  wish  I  might  venture  to  offer  a 
small  bet  that  it  isn't. ' '  But  I  did  not  chirp.  I  only 
tvaited  to  see.  Mr.  Bixby  handled  the  engine-bells, 
and  in  due  time  the  boat's  nose  came  to  the  land,  a 
torch  glowed  from  the  forecastle,  a  man  skipped 
ashore,  a  darky's  voice  on  the  bank  said:  "Gimme 
de  k'yarpet-bag,  Mass'  Jones,"  and  the  next  moment 
we  were  standing  up  the  river  again,  all  serene.  I  re- 
flected deeply  awhile,  and  then  said — but  not  aloud 
— "Well,  the  finding  of  that  plantation  was  the 
luckiest  accident  that  ever  happened;  but  it  couldn't 
happen  again  in  a  hundred  years."  And  I  fully  be- 
lieved it  was  an  accident,  too. 

By  the  time  we  had  gone  seven  or  eight  hundred 
miles  up  the  river,  I  had  learned  to  be  a  tolerably 
plucky  up-stream  steersman,  in  daylight;  and  before 


MARK     TWAIN 

we  reached  St.  Louis  I  had  made  a  trifle  of  progress 
in  night  work,  but  only  a  trifle.  I  had  a  note-book 
that  fairly  bristled  with  the  names  of  towns,  "points," 
bars,  islands,  bends,  reaches,  etc. ;  but  the  informa- 
tion was  to  be  found  only  in  the  note-book — none  of 
it  was  in  my  head.  It  made  my  heart  ache  to  think 
I  had  only  got  half  of  the  river  set  down ;  for  as  our 
watch  was  four  hours  off  and  four  hours  on,  day  and 
night,  there  was  a  long  four-hour  gap  in  my  book  for 
every  time  I  had  slept  since  the  voyage  began. 

My  chief  was  presently  hired  to  go  on  a  big..New 
Orleans  boat,  and  I  packed  my  satchel  and  went  with 
him.  She  was  a  grand  affair.  When  I  stood  in  her 
pilot-house  I  was  so  far  above  the  water  that  I 
seemed  perched  on  a  mountain;  and  her  decks 
stretched  so  far  away,  fore  and  aft,  below  me,  that 
I  wondered  how  I  could  ever  have  considered  the 
little  Paul  Jones  a  large  craft.  There  were  other 
differences,  too.  The  Paul  Jones's  pilot-house  was 
a  cheap,  dingy,  battered  rattletrap,  cramped  for 
room;  but  here  was  a  sumptuous  glass  temple; 
room  enough  to  have  a  dance  in ;  showy  red  and  gold 
window-curtains;  an  imposing  sofa ;  leather  cushions 
and  a  back  to  the  high  bench  where  visiting  pilots 
sit,  to  spin  yarns  and  "look  at  the  river";  bright, 
fanciful  "cuspidores,"  instead  of  a  broad  wooden 
box  filled  with  sawdust;  nice  new  oilcloth  on  the 
floor;  a  hospitable  big  stove  for  winter;  a  wheel  as 
high  as  my  head,  costly  with  inlaid  work;  a  wire 
tiller-rope;  bright  brass  knobs  for  the  bells;  and 
a  tidy,  white-aproned,  black  "texas-tender,"  to 
bring  up  tarts  and  ices  and  coffee  during  mid-watch, 
52 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

day  and  night.  Now  this  was  "something  like"; 
and  so  I  began  to  take  heart  once  more  to  believe 
that  piloting  was  a  romantic  sort  of  occupation  after 
all.  The  moment  we  were  under  way  I  began  to 
prowl  about  the  great  steamer  and  fill  myself  with 
joy.  She  was  as  clean  and  as  dainty  as  a  drawing- 
room;  when  I  looked  down  her  long,  gilded  saloon, 
it  was  like  gazing  through  a  splendid  tunnel;  she 
had  an  oil-picture,  by  some  gifted  sign-painter, 
on  every  stateroom  door;  she  glittered  with  no  end 
of  prism-fringed  chandeliers;  the  clerk's  office  was 
elegant,  the  bar  was  marvelous,  and  the  barkeeper 
had  been  barbered  and  upholstered  at  incredible 
cost.  The  boiler-deck  (i.  e.,  the  second  story  of  the 
boat,  so  to  speak)  was  as  spacious  as  a  church,  it 
seemed  to  me;  so  with  the  forecastle;  and  there 
was  no  pitiful  handful  of  deck-hands,  firemen,  and 
roustabouts  down  there,  but  a  whole  battalion  of 
men.  The  fires  were  fiercely  glaring  from  a  long 
row  of  furnaces,  and  over  them  were  eight  huge 
boilers!  This  was  unutterable  pomp.  The  mighty 
engines — but  enough  of  this.  I  had  never  felt  so 
fine  before.  And  when  I  found  that  the  regiment 
of  natty  servants  respectfully  "sir'd"  me,  my 
satisfaction  was  complete. 


53 


CHAPTER  VII 

A   DARING   DEED 

WHEN  I  returned  to  the  pilot-house  St.  Louis 
was  gone,  and  I  was  lost.  Here  was  a  piece 
of  river  which  was  all  down  in  my  book,  but  I 
could  make  neither  head  nor  tail  of  it:  you  under- 
stand, it  was  turned  around.  I  had  seen  it  when 
coming  up-stream,  but  I  had  never  faced  about  to 
see  how  it  looked  when  it  was  behind  me.  My  heart 
broke  again,  for  it  was  plain  that  I  had  got  to  learn 
this  troublesome  river  both  ways. 

The  pilot-house  was  full  of  pilots,  going  down  to 
"look  at  the  river."  What  is  called  the  "upper 
river"  (the  two  hundred  miles  between  St.  Louis 
and  Cairo,  where  the  Ohio  comes  in)  was  low;  and 
the  Mississippi  changes  its  channel  so  constantly  that 
the  pilots  used  to  always  find  it  necessary  to  run 
down  to  Cairo  to  take  a  fresh  look,  when  their  boats 
were  to  lie  in  port  a  week;  that  is,  when  the  water 
was  at  a  low  stage.  A  deal  of  this  "looking  at  the 
river"  was  done  by  poor  fellows  who  seldom  had 
a  berth,  and  whose  only  hope  of  getting  one  lay  in 
their  being  always  freshly  posted  and  therefore 
ready  to  drop  into  the  shoes  of  some  reputable 
pilot,  for  a  single  trip,  on  account  of  such  pilot's 
sudden  illness,  or  some  other  necessity.  And  a  good 
54 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

many  of  them  constantly  ran  up  and  down  inspect- 
ing the  river,  not  because  they  ever  really  hoped  to 
get  a  berth,  but  because  (they  being  guests  of  the 
boat)  it  was  cheaper  to  "look  at  the  river"  than 
stay  ashore  and  pay  board.  In  time  these  fellows 
grew  dainty  in  their  tastes,  and  only  infested  boats 
that  had  an  established  reputation  for  setting  good' 
tables.  All  visiting  pilots  were  useful,  for  they  were 
always  ready  and  willing,  winter  or  summer,  night 
or  day,  to  go  out  in  the  yawl  and  help  buoy  the 
channel  or  assist  the  boat's  pilots  in  any  way  they 
could.  They  were  likewise  welcomed  because  all 
pilots  are  tireless  talkers,  when  gathered  together, 
and  as  they  talk  only  about  the  river  they  are  always 
understood  and  are  always  interesting.  Your  true 
pilot  cares  nothing  about  anything  on  earth  but  the 
river,  and  his  pride  in  his  occupation  surpasses  the 
pride  of  kings. 

We  had  a  fine  company  of  these  river  inspectors 
along  this  trip.  There  were  eight  or  ten,  and  there 
was  abundance  of  room  for  them  in  our  great  pilot- 
house. Two  or  three  of  them  wore  polished  silk 
hats,  elaborate  shirt-fronts,  diamond  breastpins,  kid 
gloves,  and  patent-leather  boots.  They  were  choice 
in  their  English,  and  bore  themselves  with  a  dignity 
proper  to  men  of  solid  means  and  prodigious  reputa- 
tion as  pilots.  The  others  were  more  or  less  loosely 
clad,  and  wore  upon  their  heads  tall  felt  cones  that 
were  suggestive  of  the  days  of  the  Commonwealth. 

I  was  a  cipher  in  this  august  company,  and  felt 
subdued,   not  to  say  torpid.     I  was  not  even  of 
sufficient  consequence  to  assist  at  the  wheel  when  it 
55 


MARK    TWAIN 

was  necessary  to  put  the  tiller  hard  down  in  a  hurry; 
the  guest  that  stood  nearest  did  that  when  occasion 
required — and  this  was  pretty  much  all  the  time,  be- 
cause of  the  crookedness  of  the  channel  and  the  scant 
water.  I  stood  in  a  corner;  and  the  talk  I  listened  to 
took  the  hope  all  out  of  me.  One  visitor  said  to 
another: 

"Jim,  how  did  you  run  Plum  Point,  coming  up?" 

"It  was  in  the  night,  there,  and  I  ran  it  the  way 
one  of  the  boys  on  the  Diana  told  me;  started  out 
about  fifty  yards  above  the  wood-pile  on  the  false 
point,  and  held  on  the  cabin  under  Plum  Point  till 
I  raised  the  reef — quarter  less  twain — then  straight- 
ened up  for  the  middle  bar  till  I  got  well  abreast  the 
old  one-limbed  cottonwood  in  the  bend,  then  got 
my  stern  on  the  cottonwood,  and  head  on  the  low 
place  above  the  point,  and  came  through  a-booming 
— nine  and  a  half." 

"Pretty  square  crossing,  an't  it?" 

"Yes,  but  the  upper  bar's  working  down  fast." 

Another  pilot  spoke  up  and  said: 

"I  had  better  water  than  that,  and  ran  it  lower 
down;  started  out  from  the  false  point-^rnark  twain 
— raised  the  second  reef  abreast  the  big  snag  in  the 
bend,  and  had  quarter  less  twain." 

One  of  the  gorgeous  ones  remarked : 

"I  don't  want  to  find  fault  with  your  leadsmen, 
but  that's  a  good  deal  of  water  for  Plum  Point,  it 
seems  to  me." 

There  was  an  approving  nod  all  around  as  this 
quiet  snub  dropped  on  the  boaster  and  "settled" 
him.  And  so  they  went  on  talk-talk-talking.  Mean- 
56 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

time,  the  thing  that  was  running  in  my  mind  was, 
"Now,  if  my  ears  hear  aright,  I  have  not  only  to  get 
the  names  of  all  the  towns  and  islands  and  bends,  and 
so  on,  by  heart,  but  I  must  even  get  up  a  warm 
personal  acquaintanceship  with  every  old  snag  and 
one-limbed  cottonwood  and  obscure  wood-pile  that 
ornaments  the  banks  of  this  river  for  twelve  hundred 
miles;  and  more  than  that,  I  must  actually  know 
where  these  things  are  in  the  dark,  unless  these 
guests  are  gifted  with  eyes  that  can  pierce  through 
two  miles  of  solid  blackness.  I  wish  the  piloting 
business  was  in  Jericho  and  I  had  never  thought  of  it." 

At  dusk  Mr.  Bixby  tapped  the  big  bell  three  times 
(the  signal  to  land),  and  the  captain  emerged  from 
his  drawing-room  in  the  forward  end  of  the  "texas," 
and  looked  up  inquiringly.  Mr.  Bixby  said: 

"We  will  lay  up  here  all  night,  captain." 

"Very  well,  sir." 

That  was  all.  The  boat  came  to  shore  and  was  tied 
up  for  the  night.  It  seemed  to  me  a  fine  thing  that 
the  pilot  could  do  as  he  pleased,  without  asking  so 
grand  a  captain's  permission.  I  took  my  supper 
and  went  immediately  to  bed,  discouraged  by  my 
day's  observations  and  experiences.  My  late  voy- 
age's note-booking  was  but  a  confusion  of  meaning- 
less names.  It  had  tangled  me  all  up  in  a  knot  every 
time  I  had  looked  at  it  in  the  daytime.  I  now  hoped 
for  respite  in  sleep ;  but  no,  it  reveled  all  through  my 
head  till  sunrise  again,  a  frantic  and  tireless  night- 
mare. 

Next  morning  I  felt  pretty  rusty  and  low-spirited. 
We  went  booming  along,  taking  a  good  many 
57 


MARK     TWAIN 

chances,  for  we  were  anxious  to  "get  out  of  the  river" 
(as  getting  out  to  Cairo  was  called)  before  night 
should  overtake  us.  But  Mr.  Bixby's  partner,  the 
other  pilot,  presently  grounded  the  boat,  and  we  lost 
•so  much  time  getting  her  off  that  it  was  plain  the 
darkness  would  overtake  us  a  good  long  way  above 
the  mouth.  This  was  a  great  misfortune,  especially 
to  certain  of  our  visiting  pilots,  whose  boats  would 
.have  to  wait  for  their  return,  no  matter  how  long  that 
might  be.  It  sobered  the  pilot-house  talk  a  good 
deal.  Coming  up-stream,  pilots  did  not  mind  low 
water  or  any  kind  of  darkness ;  nothing  stopped  them 
but  fog.  But  down-stream  work  was  different;  a 
boat  was  too  nearly  helpless,  with  a  stiff  current 
pushing  behind  her;  so  it  was  not  customary  to  run 
down-stream  at  night  in  low  water. 

There  seemed  to  be  one  small  hope,  however :  if  we 
could  get  through  the  intricate  and  dangerous  Hat 
Island  crossing  before  night,  we  could  venture  the 
rest,  for  we  would  have  plainer  sailing  and  better 
water.  But  it  would  be  insanity  to  attempt  Hat 
Island  at  night.  So  there  was  a  deal  of  looking  at 
watches  all  the  rest  of  the  day,  and  a  constant 
ciphering  upon  the  speed  we  were  making;  Hat 
Island  was  the  eternal  subject;  sometimes  hope  was 
high  and  sometimes  we  were  delayed  in  a  bad 
crossing,  and  down  it  went  again.  For  hours  all 
hands  lay  under  the  burden  of  this  suppressed  excite- 
ment ;  it  was  even  communicated  to  me,  and  I  got  to 
feeling  so  solicitous  about  Hat  Island,  and  under  such 
an  awful  pressure  of  responsibility,  that  I  wished  I 
might  have  five  minutes  on  shore  to  draw  a  good,  full, 
58 


LIFE     ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

relieving  breath,  and  start  over  again.  We  were 
standing  no  regular  watches.  Each  of  our  pilots  ran 
such  portions  of  the  river  as  he  had  run  when  coming 
up-stream,  because  of  his  greater  familiarity  with  it ; 
but  both  remained  in  the  pilot-house  constantly. 

An  hour  before  sunset  Mr.  Bixby  took  the  wheel, 
and  Mr.  W.  stepped  aside.  For  the  next  thirty  min- 
utes every  man  held  his  watch  in  his  hand  and  was 
restless,  silent,  and  uneasy.  At  last  somebody  said, 
with  a  doomful  sigh: 

1 '  Well,  yonder's  Hat  Island — and  we  can't  make  it. " 

All  the  watches  closed  with  a  snap,  everybody 
sighed  and  muttered  something  about  its  being  "too 
bad,  too  bad — ah,  if  we  could  only  have  got  here 
half  an  hour  sooner!"  and  the  place  was  thick  with 
the  atmosphere  of  disappointment.  Some  started  to 
go  out,  but  loitered,  hearing  no  bell-tap  to  land.  The 
sun  dipped  behind  the  horizon,  the  boat  went  on. 
Inquiring  looks  passed  from  one  guest  to  another; 
and  one  who  had  his  hand  on  the  door-knob  and  had 
turned  it,  waited,  then  presently  took  away  his  hand 
and  let  the  knob  turn  back  again.  We  bore  steadily 
down  the  bend.  More  looks  were  exchanged,  and 
nods  of  surprised  admiration — but  no  words.  In- 
sensibly the  men  drew  together  behind  Mr.  Bixby,  as 
the  sky  darkened  and  one  or  two  dim  stars  came  out. 
The  dead  silence  and  sense  of  waiting  became  op- 
pressive. Mr.  Bixby  pulled  the  cord,  and  two  deep, 
mellow  notes  from  the  big  bell  floated  off  on  the  night. 
Then  a  pause,  and  one  more  note  was  struck.  The 
watchman's  voice  followed,  from  the  hurricane-deck: 

' '  Labboard  lead,  there !     Stabboard  lead !" 
59 


MARK    TWAIN 

The  cries  of  the  leadsmen  began  to  rise  out  of  the 
distance,  and  were  gruffly  repeated  by  the  word- 
passers  on  the  hurricane-deck. 

"M-a-r-k  three!  M-a-r-k  three!  Quarter-less- 
three!  Half  twain!  Quarter  twain !  M-a-r-k  twain! 
Quarter-less — " 

Mr.  Bixby  pulled  two  bell-ropes,  and  was  answered 
by  faint  jinglings  far  below  in  the  engine-room,  and 
our  speed  slackened.  The  steam  began  to  whistle 
through  the  gauge-cocks.  The  cries  of  the  leadsmen 
went  on — and  it  is  a  weird  sound,  always,  in  the 
night.  Every  pilot  in  the  lot  was  watching  now, 
with  fixed  eyes,  and  talking  under  his  breath.  No- 
body was  calm  and  easy  but  Mr.  Bixby.  He  would 
put  his  wheel  down  and  stand  on  a  spoke,  and  as  the 
steamer  swung  into  her  (to  me)  utterly  invisible 
marks — for  we  seemed  to  be  in  the  midst  of  a  wide 
and  gloomy  sea — he  would  meet  and  fasten  her  there. 
Out  of  the  murmur  of  half -audible  talk,  one  caught  a 
coherent  sentence  now  and  then — such  as : 

"There;  she's  over  the  first  reef  all  right!" 

After  a  pause,  another  subdued  voice : 

"Her  stern's  coming  down  just  exactly  right,  by 
George!" 

"Now  she's  in  the  marks;  over  she  goes!" 

Somebody  else  muttered : 

"Oh,  it  was  done  beautiful — beautiful!" 

Now  the  engines  were  stopped  altogether,  and  we 
drifted  with  the  current.  Not  that  I  could  see  the 
boat  drift,  for  I  could  not,  the  stars  being  all  gone 
by  this  time.  This  drifting  was  the  dismalest  work; 
it  held  one's  heart  still.  Presently  I  discovered  a 
60 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

blacker  gloom  than  that  which  surrounded  us.  It 
was  the  head  of  the  island.  We  were  closing  right 
down  upon  it.  We  entered  its  deeper  shadow,  and 
so  imminent  seemed  the  peril  that  I  was  likely  to 
suffocate;  and  I  had  the  strongest  impulse  to  do 
something,  anything,  to  save  the  vessel.  But  still 
Mr.  Bixby  stood  by  his  wheel,  silent,  intent  as  a  cat, 
and  all  the  pilots  stood  shoulder  to  shoulder  at  his 
back. 

"She'll  not  make  it!"  somebody  whispered. 

The  water  grew  shoaler  and  shpaler,  by  the  leads- 
man's cries,  till  it  was  down  to: 

"Eight-and-a-half!  E-i-g-h-t  feet!  E-i-g-h-t  feet! 
Seven-and — " 

Mr.  Bixby  said  warningly  through  his  speaking- 
tube  to  the  engineer: 

"Stand  by,  now!" 

"Ay,  ay,  sir!" 

"Seven-and-a-half!    Seven  feet!    Six-said — " 

We  touched  bottom!  Instantly  Mr.  Bixby  set  a 
lot  of  bells  ringing,  shouted  through  the  tube,  "Now, 
let  her  have  it — every  ounce  you've  got!"  then  to  his 
partner,  "Put  her  hard  down!  snatch  her!  snatch 
her !"  The  boat  rasped  and  ground  her  way  through 
the  sand,  hung  upon  the  apex  of  disaster  a  single 
tremendous  instant,  and  then  over  she  went!  And 
such  a  shout  as  went  up  at  Mr.  Bixby's  back  never 
loosened  the  roof  of  a  pilot-house  before! 

There  was  no  more  trouble  after  that.  Mr.  Bixby 
was  a  hero  that  night;  and  it  was  some  little  time, 
too,  before  his  exploit  ceased  to  be  talked  about  by 
river-men. 

61 


MARK     TWAIN 

Fully  to  realize  the  marvelous  precision  required  in 
laying  the  great  steamer  in  her  marks  in  that  murky 
waste  of  water,  one  should  know  that  not  only  must 
she  pick  her  intricate  way  through  snags  and  blind 
reefs,  and  then  shave  the  head  of  the  island  so  closely 
as  to  brush  the  overhanging  foliage  with  her  stern, 
but  at  one  place  she  must  pass  almost  within  arm's 
reach  of  a  sunken  and  invisible  wreck  that  would 
snatch  the  hull  timbers  from  under  her  if  she  should 
strike  it,  and  destroy  a  quarter  of  a  million  dollars' 
worth  of  steamboat  and  cargo  in  five  minutes,  and 
maybe  a  hundred  and  fifty  human  lives  into  the 
bargain. 

The  last  remark  I  heard  that  night  was  a  compli- 
ment to  Mr.  Bixby,  uttered  in  soliloquy  and  with 
unction  by  one  of  our  guests.  He  said : 

"By  the  Shadow  of  Death,  but  he's  a  lightning 
pilot!" 


CHAPTER  VIII 

PERPLEXING   LESSONS 

AA  the  end  of  what  seemed  a  tedious  while,  I  had 
managed  to  pack  my  head  full  of  islands,  towns, 
bars,  "points,"  and  bends;  and  a  curiously  inanimate 
mass  of  lumber  it  was,  too.  However,  inasmuch  as  I 
could  shut  my  eyes  and  reel  off  a  good  long  string  of 
these  names  without  leaving  out  more  than  ten  miles 
of  river  in  every  fifty,  I  began  to  feel  that  .1  could 
take  a  boat  down  to  New  Orleans  if  I  could  make 
her  skip  those  little  gaps.  But  of  course  my  com- 
placency could  hardly  get  start  enough  to  lift  my 
nose  a  trifle  into  the  air,  before  Mr.  Bixby  would 
think  of  something  to  fetch  it  down  again.  One  day 
he  turned  on  me  suddenly  with  this  settler : 
"What  is  the  shape  of  Walnut  Bend?" 
He  might  as  well  have  asked  me  my  grandmother's 
opinion  of  protoplasm.  I  reflected  respectfully,  and 
then  said  I  didn't  know  it  had  any  particular  shape. 
My  gun-powdery  chief  went  off  with  a  bang,  of 
course,  and  then  went  on  loading  and  firing  until  he 
was  out  of  adjectives. 

I  had  learned  long  ago  that  he  only  carried  just  so 
many  rounds  of  ammunition,  and  was  sure  to  subside 
into  a  very  placable  and  even  remorseful  old  smooth- 
bore as  soon  as  they  were  all  gone.     That  word 
63 


MARK    TWAIN 

"old"  is  merely  affectionate;  he  was  not  more  than 
thirty-four.  I  waited.  By  and  by  he  said: 

"My  boy,  you've  got  to  know  the  shape  of  the 
river  perfectly.  It  is  all  there  is  left  to  steer  by  on  a 
very  dark  night.  Everything  else  is  blotted  out  and 
gone.  But  mind  you,  it  hasn't  the  same  shape  in  the 
night  that  it  has  in  the  daytime." 

"How  on  earth  am  I  ever  going  to  learn  it,  then?" 

"How  do  you  follow  a  hall  at  home  in  the  dark? 
Because  you  know  the  shape  of  it.  You  can't  see  it." 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  that  I've  got  to  know  all 
the  million  trifling  variations  of  shape  in  the  banks 
of  this  interminable  river  as  well  as  I  know  the  shape 
of  the  front  hall  at  home?" 

"On  my  honor,  you've  got  to  know  them  better 
than  any  man  ever  did  know  the  shapes  of  the  halls 
in  his  own  house." 

"I  wish  I  was  dead!" 

"Now  I  don't  want  to  discourage  you,  but — " 

"Well,  pile  it  on  me;  I  might  as  well  have  it  now 
as  another  time." 

"You  see,  this  has  got  to  be  learned;  there  isn't 
any  getting  around  it.  A  clear  starlight  night  throws 
such  heavy  shadows  that,  if  you  didn't  know  the 
shape  of  a  shore  perfectly,  you  would  claw  away 
from  every  bunch  of  timber,  because  you  would  take 
the  black  shadow  of  it  for  a  solid  cape;  and  you  see 
you  would  be  getting  scared  to  death  every  fifteen 
minutes  by  the  watch.  You  would  be  fifty  yards 
from  shore  all  the  time  when  you  ought  to  be  within 
fifty  feet  of  it.  You  can't  see  a  snag  in  one  of  those 
shadows,  but  you  know  exactly  where  it  is,  and  the 
64 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

shape  of  the  river  tells  you  when  you  are  coming  to 
it.  Then  there's  your  pitch-dark  night ;  the  river  is 
a  very  different  shape  on  a  pitch-dark  night  from 
what  it  is  on  a  star-light  night.  All  shores  seem  to 
be  straight  lines,  then,  and  mighty  dim  ones,  too; 
and  you'd  run  them  for  straight  lines,  only  you  know 
better.  You  boldly  drive  your  boat  right  into  what 
seems  to  be  a  solid,  straight  wall  (you  knowing  very 
well  that  in  reality  there  is  a  curve  there),  and  that 
wall  falls  back  and  makes  way  for  you.  Then  there's 
your  gray  mist.  You  take  a  night  when  there's  one 
of  these  grisly,  drizzly,  gray  mists,  and  then  there 
isn't  any  particular  shape  to  a  shore.  A  gray  mist 
would  tangle  the  head  of  the  oldest  man  that  ever 
lived.  Well,  then,  different  kinds  of  moonlight  change 
the  shape  of  the  river  in  different  ways.  You  see — " 

"Oh,  don't  say  any  more,  please!  Have  I  got  to 
learn  the  shape  of  the  river  according  to  all  these 
five  hundred  thousand  different  ways  ?  If  I  tried  to 
carry  all  that  cargo  in  my  head  it  would  make  me 
stoop-shouldered. ' ' 

"No!  you  only  learn  the  shape  of  the  river;  and 
you  learn  it  with  such  absolute  certainty  that  you 
can  always  steer  by  the  shape  that's  in  your  head, 
and  never  mind  the  one  that's  before  your  eyes." 

"Very  well,  I'll  try  it;  but,  after  I  have  learned 
it,  can  I  depend  on  it  ?  Will  it  keep  the  same  form 
and  not  go  fooling  around?" 

Before  Mr.  Bixby  could  answer,  Mr.  W.  came  in 
to  take  the  watch,  and  he  said : 

"Bixby,  you'll  have  to  look  out  for  President's 
Island,  and  all  that  country  clear  away  up  above  the 
65 


MARK    TWAIN 

Old  Hen  and  Chickens.  The  banks  are  caving  and 
the  shape  of  the  shores  changing  like  everything. 
Why,  you  wouldn't  know  the  point  above  40.  You 
can  go  up  inside  the  old  sycamore  snag,  now."1 

So  that  question  was  answered.  Here  were  leagues 
of  shore  changing  shape.  My  spirits  were  down  in 
the  mud  again.  Two  things  seemed  pretty  apparent 
to  me.  One  was,  that  in  order  to  be  a  pilot  a  man 
had  got  to  learn  more  than  any  one  man  ought  to 
be  allowed  to  know;  and  the  other  was,  that  he 
must  learn  it  all  over  again  in  a  different  way  every 
twenty-four  hours. 

That  night  we  had  the  watch  until  twelve.  Now 
it  was  an  ancient  river  custom  for  the  two  pilots  to 
chat  a  bit  when  the  watch  changed.  While  the 
relieving  pilot  put  on  his  gloves  and  lit  his  cigar,  his 
partner,  the  retiring  pilot,  would  say  something  like 
this: 

"I  judge  the  upper  bar  is  making  down  a  little 
at  Hale's  Point;  had  quarter  twain  with  the  lower 
lead  and  mark  twain2  with  the  other." 

"Yes,  I  thought  it  was  making  down  a  little,  last 
trip.  Meet  any  boats?" 

"Met  one  abreast  the  head  of  21,  but  she  was 
away  over  hugging  the  bar,  and  I  couldn't  make  her 
out  entirely.  I  took  her  for  the  Sunny  South — 
hadn't  any  skylights  forward  of  the  chimneys." 

And  so  on.     And  as  the  relieving  pilot  took  the 

xlt  may  not  be  necessary,  but  still  it  can  do  no  harm  to  explain  that 
"inside"  means  between  the  snag  and  the  shore. — M.  T. 

2 Two  fathoms.  Quarter  twain  is  2><  fathoms,  13^  feet.  Mark 
three  is  three  fathoms. 

66 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

wheel  his  partner1  would  mention  that  we  were  in 
such-and-such  a  bend,  and  say  we  were  abreast  of 
such-and-such  a  man's  woodyard  or  plantation.  This 
was  courtesy;  I  supposed  it  was  necessity.  But  Mr. 
W.  came  on  watch  full  twelve  minutes  late  on  this 
particular  night — a  tremendous  breach  of  etiquette; 
in  fact,  it  is  the  unpardonable  sin  among  pilots. 
So  Mr.  Bixby  gave  him  no  greeting  whatever,  but 
simply  surrendered  the  wheel  and  marched  out  of 
the  pilot-house  without  a  word.  I  was  appalled;  it 
was  a  villainous  night  for  blackness,  we  were  in  a 
particularly  wide  and  blind  part  of  the  river,  where 
there  was  no  shape  or  substance  to  anything,  and  it 
seemed  incredible  that  Mr.  Bixby  should  have  left 
that  poor  fellow  to  kill  the  boat,  trying  to  find  out 
where  he  was.  But  I  resolved  that  I  would  stand 
by  him  anyway.  He  should  find  that  he  was  not 
wholly  friendless.  So  I  stood  around,  and  waited  to 
be  asked  where  we  were.  But  Mr.  W.  plunged  on 
serenely  through  the  solid  firmament  of  black  cats 
that  stood  for  an  atmosphere,  and  never  opened  his 
mouth.  "Here  is  a  proud  devil!"  thought  I;  "here 
is  a  limb  of  Satan  that  would  rather  send  us  all  to 
destruction  than  put  himself  under  obligations  to  me, 
because  I  am  not  yet  one  of  the  salt  of  the  earth 
and  privileged  to  snub  captains  and  lord  it  over 
everything  dead  and  alive  in  a  steamboat."  I  pres- 
ently climbed  up  on  the  bench ;  I  did  not  think  it  was 
safe  to  go  to  sleep  while  this  lunatic  was  on  watch. 
However,  I  must  have  gone  to  sleep  in  the  course 
of  time,  because  the  next  thing  I  was  aware  of  was 

1<(  Partner"  is  technical  for  "the  other  pilot." 
67 


MARK     TWAIN 

the  fact  that  day  was  breaking^Mr.  W.  gone,  and 
Mr.  Bixby  at  the  wheel  again.  So  it  was  four 
o'clock  and  all  well — but  me;  I  felt  like  a  skinful 
of  dry  bones,  and  all  of  them  trying  to  ache  at 
once. 

Mr.  Bixby  asked  me  what  I  had  stayed  up  there 
for.  I  confessed  that  it  was  to  do  Mr.  W.  a  benevo- 
lence— tell  him  where  he  was.  It  took  five  minutes 
for  the  entire  preposterousness  of  the  thing  to  filter 
into  Mr.  Bixby's  system,  and  then  I  judge  it  filled  him 
nearly  up  to  the  chin;  because  he  paid  me  a  com- 
pliment— and  not  much  of  a  one  either.  He  said: 

"Well,  taking  you  by  and  large,  you  do  seem  to 
be  more  different  kinds  of  an  ass  than  any  creature 
I  ever  saw  before.  What  did  you  suppose  he  wanted 
to  know  for?" 

I  said  I  thought  it  might  be  a  convenience  to  him. 

"Convenience!  D nation!  Didn't  I  tell  you 

that  a  man's  got  to  know  the  river  in  the  night  the 
same  as  he'd  know  his  own  front  hall?" 

"Well,  I  can  follow  the  front  hall  in  the  dark 
if  I  know  it  is  the  front  hall ;  but  suppose  you  set  me 
down  in  the  middle  of  it  in  the  dark  and  not  tell 
me  which  hall  it  is;  how  am  I  to  know?" 

"Well,  you've  got  to,  on  the  river!" 

"All  right.  Then  I'm  glad  I  never  said  anything 
to  Mr.  W." 

"I  should  say  so!  Why,  he'd  have  slammed  you 
through  the  window  and  utterly  ruined  a  hundred 
dollars'  worth  of  window-sash  and  stuff." 

I  was  glad  this  damage  had  been  saved,  for  it 
would  have  made  me  unpopular  with  the  owners. 
68 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

They  always  hated  anybody  who  had  the  name  of 
being  careless  and  injuring  things. 

I  went  to  work  now  to  learn  the  shape  of  the 
river;  and  of  all  the  eluding  and  ungraspable  objects 
that  ever  I  tried  to  get  mind  or  hands  on,  that  was 
the  chief.  I  would  fasten  my  eyes  upon  a  sharp, 
wooded  point  that  projected  far  into  the  river  some 
miles  ahead  of  me,  and  go  to  laboriously  photo- 
graphing its  shape  upon  my  brain ;  and  just  as  I  was 
beginning  to  succeed  to  my  satisfaction,  we  would 
draw  up  toward  it  and  the  exasperating  thing  would 
begin  to  melt  away  and  fold  back  into  the  bank!  If 
there  had  been  a  conspicuous  dead  tree  standing 
upon  the  very  point  of  the  cape,  I  would  find  that 
tree  inconspicuously  merged  into  the  general  forest, 
and  occupying  the  middle  of  a  straight  shore,  when 
I  got  abreast  of  it!  No  prominent  hill  would  stick 
to  its  shape  long  enough  for  me  to  make  up  my 
mind  what  its  form  really  was,  but  it  was  as  dis- 
solving and  changeful  as  if  it  had  been  a  mountain 
of  butter  in  the  hottest  corner  of  the  tropics.  Noth- 
ing ever  had  the  same  shape  when  I  was  coming 
down-stream  that  it  had  borne  when  I  went  up.  I 
mentioned  these  little  difficulties  to  Mr.  Bixby.  He 
said: 

' '  That's  the  very  main  virtue  of  the  thing.  If  the 
shapes  didn't  change  every  three  seconds  they 
wouldn't  be  of  any  use.  Take  this  place  where  we 
are  now,  for  instance.  As  long  as  that  hill  over 
yonder  is  only  one  hill,  I  can  boom  right  along  the 
way  I'm  going;  but  the  moment  it  splits  at  the  top 
and  forms  a  V,  I  know  I've  got  to  scratch  to  star- 
69 


MARK    TWAIN 

board  in  a  hurry,  or  I'll  bang  this  boat's  brains  out 
against  a  rock;  and  then  the  moment  one  of  the 
prongs  of  the  V  swings  behind  the  other,  I've  got 
to  waltz  to  larboard  again,  or  I'll  have  a  misunder- 
standing with  a  snag  that  would  snatch  the  keelson 
out  of  this  steamboat  as  neatly  as  if  it  were  a  sliver 
in  your  hand.  If  that  hill  didn't  change  its  shape 
on  bad  nights  there  would  be  an  awful  steamboat 
graveyard  around  here  inside  of  a  year." 

It  was  plain  that  I  had  got  to  learn  the  shape  of 
the  river  in  all  the  different  ways  that  could  be 
thought  of — upside  down,  wrong  end  first,  inside  out, 
fore-and-aft,  and  "thort-ships" — and  then  know 
what  to  do  on  gray  nights  when  it  hadn't  any  shape 
at  all.  So  I  set  about  it.  In  the  course  of  time  I 
began  to  get  the  best  of  this  knotty  lesson,  and  my 
self-complacency  moved  to  the  front  once  more.  Mr. 
Bixby  was  all  fixed,  and  ready  to  start  it  to  the  rear 
again.  He  opened  on  me  after  this  fashion: 

"How  much  water  did  we  have  in  the  middle 
crossing  at  Hole-in-the-Wall,  trip  before  last?" 

I  considered  this  an  outrage.     I  said : 

"Every  trip,  down  and  up,  the  leadsmen  are 
singing  through  that  tangled  place  for  three-quarters 
of  an  hour  on  a  stretch.  How  do  you  reckon  I  can 
remember  such  a  mess  as  that?" 

My  boy,  you've  got  to  remember  it.  You've  got 
to  remember  the  exact  spot  and  the  exact  marks  the 
boat  lay  in  when  we  had  the  shoalest  water,  in  every 
one  of  the  five  hundred  shoal  places  between  St.  Louis 
and  New  Orleans;  and  you  mustn't  get  the  shoal 
soundings  and  marks  of  one  trip  mixed  up  with  the 
70 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

shoal  soundings  and  marks  of  another,  either,  for 
they're  not  often  twice  alike.  You  must  keep  them 
separate." 

When  I  came  to  myself  again,  I  said : 
"When  I  get  so  that  I  can  do  that,  I'll  be  able  to 
raise  the  dead,  and  then  I  won't  have  to  pilot  a 
steamboat  to  make  a  living.     I  want  to  retire  from 
this  business.     I  want  a  slush-bucket  and  a  brush; 
I'm  only  fit  for  a  roustabout.     I  haven't  got  brains 
enough  to  be  a  pilot;  and  if  I  had  I  wouldn't  have 
strength  enough  to  carry  them  around,  unless  I  went   } 
on  crutches." 

"Now  drop  that!  When  I  say  I'll  learn1  a  man 
the  river,  I  mean  it.  And  you  can  depend  on  it, 
I'll  learn  him  or  kill  him." 

1(1  Teach"  is  not  in  the  river  vocabulary. 


CHAPTER  IX 

CONTINUED  PERPLEXITIES 

THERE  was  no  use  in  arguing  with  a  person  like 
this.  I  promptly  put  such  a  strain  on  my 
memory  that  by  and  by  even  the  shoal  water  and  the 
countless  crossing-marks  began  to  stay  with  me. 
But  the  result  was  just  the  same.  I  never  could 
more  than  get  one  knotty  thing  learned  before  an- 
other presented  itself.  Now  I  had  often  seen  pilots 
gazing  at  the  water  and  pretending  to  read  it  as  it 
it  were  a  book;  but  it  was  a  book  that  told  me  noth- 
ing. A  time  came  at  last,  however,  when  Mr.  Bixby 
seemed  to  think  me  far  enough  advanced  to  bear  a 
lesson  on  water-reading.  So  he  began : 

"Do  you  see  that  long,  slanting  line  on  the  face 
of  the  water?  Now,  that's  a  reef.  Moreover,  it's  a 
bluff  reef.  There  is  a  solid  sand-bar  under  it  that 
is  nearly  as  straight  up  and  down  as  the  side  of  a 
house.  There  is  plenty  of  water  close  up  to  it,  but 
mighty  little  on  top  of  it.  If  you  were  to  hit  it  you 
would  knock  the  boat's  brains  out.  Do  you  see 
where  the  line  fringes  out  at  the  upper  end  and 
begins  to  fade  away?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Well,  that  is  a  low  place;  that  is  the  head  of 
the  reef.  You  can  climb  over  there,  and  not  hurt 
72 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

anything.  Cross  over,  now,  and  follow  along  close 
under  the  reef — easy  water  there — not  much  cur- 
rent." 

I  followed  the  reef  along  till  I  approached  the 
fringed  end.  Then  Mr.  Bixby  said: 

"  Now  get  ready.  Wait  till  I  give  the  word.  She 
won't  want  to  mount  the  reef;  a  boat  hates  shoal 
water.  Stand  by — wait — wait — keep  her  well  in 
hand.  Now  cramp  her  down!  Snatch  her!  snatch 
her!" 

He  seized  the  other  side  of  the  wheel  and  helped 
to  spin  it  around  until  it  was  hard  down,  and  then 
we  held  it  so.  The  boat  resisted,  and  refused  to 
answer  for  a  while,  and  next  she  came  surging  to 
starboard,  mounted  the  reef,  and  sent  a  long,  angry 
ridge  of  water  foaming  away  from  her  bows. 

"Now  watch  her;  watch  her  like  a  cat,  or  she'll 
get  away  from  you.  When  she  fights  strong  and  the 
tiller  slips  a  little,  in  a  jerky,  greasy  sort  of  way,  let 
up  on  her  a  trifle ;  it  is  the  way  she  tells  you  at  night 
that  the  water  is  too  shoal ;  but  keep  edging  her  up, 
little  by  little,  toward  the  point.  You  are  well  up 
on  the  bar  now;  there  is  a  bar  under  every  point, 
because  the  water  that  conies  down  around  it  forms 
an  eddy  and  allows  the  sediment  to  sink.  Do  you 
see  those  fine  lines  on  the  face  of  the  water  that 
branch  out  like  the  ribs  of  a  fan?  Well,  those  are 
little  reefs;  you  want  to  just  miss  the  ends  of  them, 
but  run  them  pretty  close.  Now  look  out — look 
out!  Don't  you  crowd  that  slick,  greasy-looking 
place;  there  ain't  nine  feet  there;  she  won't  stand  it. 
She  begins  to  smell  it;  look  sharp,  I  tell  you!  Oh, 
73 


MARK    TWAIN 

blazes,  there  you  go!  Stop  the  starboard  wheel! 
Quick!  Ship  up  to  back !  Set  her  back!" 

The  engine  bells  jingled  and  the  engines  answered 
promptly,  shooting  white  columns  of  steam  far  aloft 
out  of  the  'scape-pipes,  but  it  was  too  late.  The 
boat  had  "smelt "  the  bar  in  good  earnest ;  the  foamy 
ridges  that  radiated  from  her  bows  suddenly  dis- 
appeared, a  great  dead  swell  came  rolling  forward, 
and  swept  ahead  of  her,  she  careened  far  over  to 
larboard,  and  went  tearing  away  toward  the  shore 
as  if  she  were  about  scared  to  death.  We  were  a 
good  mile  from  where  we  ought  to  have  been  when 
we  finally  got  the  upper  hand  of  her  again. 

During  the  afternoon  watch  the  next  day,  Mr. 
Bixby  asked  me  if  I  knew  how  to  run  the  next  few 
miles.  I  said: 

"Go  inside  the  first  snag  above  the  point,  outside 
the  next  one,  start  out  from  the  lower  end  of  Higgins's 
woodyard,  make  a  square  crossing,  and — " 

"That's  all  right.  I'll  be  back  before  you  close 
up  on  the  next  point." 

But  he  wasn't.  He  was  still  below  when  I  rounded 
it  and  entered  upon  a  piece  of  the  river  which  I  had 
some  misgivings  about.  I  did  not  know  that  he 
was  hiding  behind  a  chimney  to  see  how  I  would 
perform.  I  went  gaily  along,  getting  prouder  and 
prouder,  for  he  had  never  left  the  boat  in  my  sole 
charge  such  a  length  of  time  before.  I  even  got  to 
"setting"  her  and  letting  the  wheel  go  entirely, 
while  I  vaingloriously  turned  my  back  and  inspected 
the  stern  marks  and  hummed  a  tune,  a  sort  of  easy 
indifference  which  I  had  prodigiously  admired  in 
74 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

Bixby  and  other  great  pilots.  Once  I  inspected 
rather  long,  and  when  I  faced  to  the  front  again 
my  heart  flew  into  my  mouth  so  suddenly  that  if 
I  hadn't  clapped  my  teeth  together  I  should  have 
lost  it.  One  of  those  frightful  bluff  reefs  was  stretch- 
ing its  deadly  length  right  across  our  bows!  My 
head  was  gone  in  a  moment;  I  did  not  know  which 
end  I  stood  on ;  I  gasped  and  could  not  get  my  breath ; 
I  spun  the  wheel  down  with  such  rapidity  that  it 
wove  itself  together  like  a  spider's  web;  the  boat 
answered  and  turned  square  away  from  the  reef,  but 
the  reef  followed  her!  I  fled,  but  still  it  followed, 
still  it  kept — right  across  my  bows !  I  never  looked 
to  see  where  I  was  going,  I  only  fled.  The  awful 
crash  was  imminent.  Why  didn't  that  villain 
come?  If  I  committed  the  crime  of  ringing  a  bell 
I  might  get  thrown  overboard.  But  better  that  than 
kill  the  boat.  So  in  blind  desperation,  I  started 
such  a  rattling  "shivaree"  down  below  as  never 
had  astounded  an  engineer  in  this  world  before,  I 
fancy.  Amidst  the  frenzy  of  the  bells  the  engines 
began  to  back  and  fill  in  a  curious  way,  and  my 
reason  forsook  its  throne — we  were  about  to  crash 
into  the  woods  on  the  other  side  of  the  river.  Just 
then  Mr.  Bixby  stepped  calmly  into  view  on  the  hur- 
ricane-deck. My  soul  went  out  to  him  in  gratitude. 
My  distress  vanished ;  I  would  have  felt  safe  on  the 
brink  of  Niagara  with  Mr.  Bixby  on  the  hurricane- 
deck.  He  blandly  and  sweetly  took  his  toothpick 
out  of  his  mouth  between  his  fingers,  as  if  it  were 
a  cigar — we  were  just  in  the  act  of  climbing  an 
overhanging  big  tree,  and  the  passengers  were  scud- 
75 


MARK    TWAIN 

ding  astern  like  rats — and  lifted  up  these  commands 
to  me  ever  so  gently: 

' '  Stop  the  starboard !  Stop  the  larboard !  Set  her 
back  on  both!" 

The  boat  hesitated,  halted,  pressed  her  nose  among 
the  boughs  a  critical  instant,  then  reluctantly  began 
to  back  away. 

' '  Stop  the  larboard !  Come  ahead  on  it !  Stop  the 
starboard!  Come  ahead  on  it!  Point  her  for  the 
bar!" 

I  sailed  away  as  serenely  as  a  summer's  morning. 
Mr.  Bixby  came  in  and  said,  with  mock  simplicity: 

"When  you  have  a  hail,  my  boy,  you  ought  to 
tap  the  big  bell  three  times  before  you  land,  so  that 
the  engineers  can  get  ready." 

I  blushed  under  the  sarcasm,  and  said  I  hadn't 
had  any  hail. 

"Ah!  Then  it  was  for  wood,  I  suppose.  The 
officer  of  the  watch  will  tell  you  when  he  wants  to 
wood  up." 

I  went  on  consuming,  and  said  I  wasn't  after  wood. 

"Indeed?  Why,  what  could  you  want  over  here 
in  the  bend,  then?  Did  you  ever  know  of  a  boat 
following  a  bend  up-stream  at  this  stage  of  the 
river?" 

"No,  sir — and  I  wasn't  trying  to  follow  it.  I  was 
getting  away  from  a  bluff  reef." 

"No,  it  wasn't  a  bluff  reef;  there  isn't  one  within 
three  miles  of  where  you  were." 

"  B  ut  I  saw  it .     It  was  as  bluff  as  that  one  yonder. '  * 

' '  Just  about.     Run  over  it !" 

"Do  you  give  it  as  an  order?" 
76 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

"Yes.     Run  over  it!" 

"If  I  don't,  I  wish  I  may  die." 

"All  right;  I  am  taking  the  responsibility." 

I  was  just  as  anxious  to  kill  the  boat,  now,  as  I 
had  been  to  save  it  before.  I  impressed  my  orders 
upon  my  memory,  to  be  used  at  the  inquest,  and 
made  a  straight  break  for  the  reef.  As  it  disappeared 
under  our  bows  I  held  my  breath;  but  we  slid  over 
it  like  oil. 

"Now,  don't  you  see  the  difference?  It  wasn't 
anything  but  a  wind  reef.  The  wind  does  that." 

"So  I  see.  But  it  is  exactly  like  a  bluff  reef. 
How  am  I  ever  going  to  tell  them  apart?" 

"I  can't  tell  you.  It  is  an  instinct.  By  and  by 
you  will  just  naturally  know  one  from  the  other,  but 
you  never  will  be  able  to  explain  why  or  how  you 
know  them  apart." 

It  turned  out  to  be  true.  The  face  of  the  water, 
in  time,  became  a  wonderful  book — a  book  that  was 
a  dead  language  to  the  uneducated  passenger,  but 
which  told  its  mind  to  me  without  reserve,  delivering 
its  most  cherished  secrets  as  clearly  as  if  it  uttered 
them  with  a  voice.  And  it  was  not  a  book  to  be 
read  once  and  thrown  aside,  for  it  had  a  new  story 
to  tell  every  day.  Throughout  the  long  twelve 
hundred  miles  there  was  never  a  page  that  was  void 
of  interest,  never  one  that  you  could  leave  unread 
without  loss,  never  one  that  you  would  want  to  skip, 
thinking  you  could  find  higher  enjoyment  in  some 
other  thing.  There  never  was  so  wonderful  a  book 
written  by  man;  never  one  whose  interest  was  so 
absorbing,  so  unflagging,  so  sparklingly  renewed  with 
77 


MARK     TWAIN 

every  reperusal.  The  passenger  who  could  not  read 
it  was  charmed  with  a  peculiar  sort  of  faint  dimple 
on  its  surface  (on  the  rare  occasions  when  he  did  not 
overlook  it  altogether) ;  but  to  the  pilot  that  was  an 
italicized  passage;  indeed,  it  was  more  than  that,  it 
was  a  legend  of  the  largest  capitals,  with  a  string  of 
shouting  exclamation-points  at  the  end  of  it,  for  it 
meant  that  a  wreck  or  a  rock  was  buried  there  that 
could  tear  the  life  out  of  the  strongest  vessel  that 
ever  floated.  It  is  the  faintest  and  simplest  expres- 
sion the  water  ever  makes,  and  the  most  hideous  to 
a  pilot's  eye.  In  truth,  the  passenger  who  could  not 
read  this  book  saw  nothing  but  all  manner  of  pretty 
pictures  in  it,  painted  by  the  sun  and  shaded  by  the 
clouds,  whereas  to  the  trained  eye  these  were  not 
pictures  at  all,  but  the  grimmest  and  most  dead- 
earnest  of  reading-matter. 

Now  when  I  had  mastered  the  language  of  this 
water,  and  had  come  to  know  every  trifling  feature 
that  bordered  the  great  river  as  familiarly  as  I  knew 
the  letters  of  the  alphabet,  I  had  made  a  valuable 
acquisition.  But  I  had  lost  something,  too.  I  had 
lost  something  which  could  never  be  restored  to  me 
while  I  lived.  All  the  grace,  the  beauty,  the  poetry, 
'  had  gone  out  of  the  majestic  river!  I  still  kept  in 
mind  a  certain  wonderful  sunset  which  I  witnessed 
when  steamboating  was  new  to  me.  A  broad  ex- 
panse of  the  river  was  turned  to  blood ;  in  the  middle 
distance  the  red  hue  brightened  into  gold,  through 
which  a  solitary  log  came  floating,  black  and  con- 
spicuous; in  one  place  a  long,  slanting  mark  lay 
sparkling  upon  the  water ;  in  another  the  surface  was 
78 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

broken  by  boiling,  tumbling  rings,  that  were  as 
many-tinted  as  an  opal;  where  the  ruddy  flush  was 
faintest,  was  a  smooth  spot  that  was  covered  with 
graceful  circles  and  radiating  lines,  ever  so  deli- 
cately traced;  the  shore  on  our  left  was  densely 
wooded,  and  the  somber  shadow  that  fell  from  this 
forest  was  broken  in  one  place  by  a  long,  ruffled  trail 
that  shone  like  silver ;  and  high  above  the  forest  wall 
a  clean-stemmed  dead  tree  waved  a  single  leafy 
bough  that  glowed  like  a  flame  in  the  unobstructed 
splendor  that  was  flowing  from  the  sun.  There  were 
graceful  curves,  reflected  images,  woody  heights,  soft 
distances ;  and  over  the  whole  scene,  far  and  near,  the 
dissolving  lights  drifted  steadily,  enriching  it  every 
passing  moment  with  new  marvels  of  coloring. 

I  stood  like  one  bewitched.  I  drank  it  in,  in  a 
speechless  rapture.  The  world  was  new  to  me,  and 
I  had  never  seen  anything  like  this  at  home.  But 
as  I  have  said,  a  day  came  when  I  began  to  cease 
from  noting  the  glories  and  the  charms  which  the 
moon  and  the  sun  and  the  twilight  wrought  upon 
the  river's  face;  another  day  came  when  I  ceased 
altogether  to  note  them.  Then,  if  that  sunset  scene 
had  been  repeated,  I  should  have  looked  upon  it 
without  rapture,  and  should  have  commented  upon 
it,  inwardly,  after  this  fashion:  "This  sun  means  that 
we  are  going  to  have  wind  to-morrow;  that  floating 
log  means  that  the  river  is  rising,  small  thanks  to 
it ;  that  slanting  mark  on  the  water  refers  to  a  bluff 
reef  which  is  going  to  kill  somebody's  steamboat  one 
of  these  nights,  if  it  keeps  on  stretching  out  like  that ; 
those  tumbling  'boils'  show  a  dissolving  bar  and  a 
79 


MARK    TWAIN 

changing  channel  there;  the  lines  and  circles  in  the 
slick  water  over  yonder  are  a  warning  that  that 
troublesome  place  is  shoaling  up  dangerously;  that 
silver  streak  in  the  shadow  of  the  forest  is  the 
'break'  from  a  new  snag,  and  he  has  located  himself 
in  the  very  best  place  he  could  have  found  to  fish 
for  steamboats;  that  tall  dead  tree,  with  a  single 
living  branch,  is  not  going  to  last  long,  and  then 
how  is  a  body  ever  going  to  get  through  this  blind 
place  at  night  without  the  friendly  old  landmark?" 
No,  the  romance  and  beauty  were  all  gone  from 
the  river.  All  the  value  any  feature  of  it  had  for 
me  now  was  the  amount  of  usefulness  it  could  furnish 
toward  compassing  the  safe  piloting  of  a  steamboat. 
Since  those  days,  I  have  pitied  doctors  from  my 
heart.  What  does  the  lovely  flush  in  a  beauty's 
cheek  mean  to  a  doctor  but  a  "break"  that  ripples 
above  some  deadly  disease?  Are  not  all  her  visible 
charms  sown  thick  with  what  are  to  him  the  signs  and 
symbols  of  hidden  decay?  Does  he  ever  see  her 
beauty  at  all,  or  doesn't  he  simply  view  her  profes- 
sionally, and  comment  upon  her  unwholesome  con- 
dition all  to  himself?  And  doesn't  he  sometimes 
wonder  whether  he  has  gained  most  or  lost  most  by 
learning  his  trade? 


CHAPTER  X 

COMPLETING   MY   EDUCATION 

WHOSOEVER  has  done  me  the  courtesy  to 
read  my  chapters  which  have  preceded  this 
may  possibly  wonder  that  I  deal  so  minutely  with 
piloting  as  a  science.  It  was  the  prime  purpose  of 
those  chapters;  and  I  am  not  quite  done  yet.  I  wish 
to  show,  in  the  most  patient  and  painstaking  way, 
what  a  wonderful  science  it  is.  Ship-channels  are 
buoyed  and  lighted,  and  therefore  it  is  a  compara- 
tively easy  undertaking  to  learn  to  run  them;  clear- 
water  rivers  with  gravel  bottoms,  change  their  chan- 
nels very  gradually,  and  therefore  one  needs  to  learn 
them  but  once;  but  piloting  becomes  another  matter 
when  you  apply  it  to  vast  streams  like  the  Missis- 
sippi and  the  Missouri,  whose  alluvial  banks  cave 
and  change  constantly,  whose  snags  are  always 
hunting  up  new  quarters,  whose  sand  -  bars  are 
never  at  rest,  whose  channels  are  forever  dodging 
and  shirking,  and  whose  obstructions  must  be  con- 
fronted in  all  nights  and  all  weathers  without  the 
aid  of  a  single  lighthouse  or  a  single  buoy;  for 
there  is  neither  light  nor  buoy  to  be  found  any- 
where in  all  this  three  or  four  thousand  miles  of 
villainous  river.1  I  feel  justified  in  enlarging  upon 

1  True  at  the  time  referred  to;  not  true  now  (1882). 
81 


MARK     TWAIN 

this  great  science  for  the  reason  that  I  feel  sure 
no  one  has  ever  yet  written  a  paragraph  about  it 
who  had  piloted  a  steamboat  himself,  and  so  had  a 
practical  knowledge  of  the  subject.  If  the  theme 
was  hackneyed,  I  should  be  obliged  to  deal  gently 
with  the  reader;  but  since  it  is  wholly  new,  I  have 
felt  at  liberty  to  take  up  a  considerable  degree  of 
room  with  it. 

When  I  had  learned  the  name  and  position  of 
every  visible  feature  of  the  river;  when  I  had  so 
mastered  its  shape  that  I  could  shut  my  eyes  and 
trace  it  from  St.  Louis  to  New  Orleans;  when  I  had 
learned  to  read  the  face  of  the  water  as  one  would 
cull  the  news  from  the  morning  paper;  and  finally, 
when  I  had  trained  my  dull  memory  to  treasure  up 
an  endless  array  of  soundings  and  crossing-marks, 
and  keep  fast  hold  of  them,  I  judged  that  my  educa- 
tion was  complete;  so  I  got  to  tilting  my  cap  to  the 
side  of  my  head,  and  wearing  a  toothpick  in  my 
mouth  at  the  wheel.  Mr.  Bixby  had  his  eye  on 
these  airs.  One  day  he  said: 

"What  is  the  height  of  that  bank  yonder,  at 
Burgess's?" 

"How  can  I  tell,  sir?  It  is  three-quarters  of  a 
mile  away." 

"Very  poor  eye — very  poor.     Take  the  glass." 

I  took  the  glass  and  presently  said : 

"I  can't  tell.  I  suppose  that  that  bank  is  about 
a  foot  and  a  half  high." 

"Foot  and  a  half!  That's  a  six-foot  bank.  How 
high  was  the  bank  along  here  last  trip?" 

"I  don't  know;  I  never  noticed." 
82 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

"You  didn't?  Well,  you  must  always  do  it 
hereafter." 

"Why?" 

"Because  you'll  have  to  know  a  good  many  things 
that  it  tells  you.  For  one  thing,  it  tells  you  the 
stage  of  the  river — tells  you  whether  there's  more 
water  or  less  in  the  river  along  here  than  there  was 
last  trip." 

"The  leads  tell  me  that."  I  rather  thought  I  had 
the  advantage  of  him  there. 

' '  Yes,  but  suppose  the  leads  lie  ?  The  bank  would 
tell  you  so,  and  then  you  would  stir  those  leadsmen 
up  a  bit.  There  was  a  ten-foot  bank  here  last  trip, 
and  there  is  only  a  six-foot  bank  now.  What  does 
that  signify?" 

"That  the  river  is  four  feet  higher  than  it  was  last 
trip." 

"Very  good.     Is  the  river  rising  or  falling?" 

"Rising." 

"No,  it  ain't." 

"I  guess  I  am  right,  sir.  Yonder  is  some  drift- 
wood floating  down  the  stream." 

"A  rise  starts  the  driftwood,  but  then  it  keeps  on 
floating  awhile  after  the  river  is  done  rising.  Now 
the  bank  will  tell  you  about  this.  Wait  till  you  come 
to  a  place  where  it  shelves  a  little.  Now  here:  do 
you  see  this  narrow  belt  of  fine  sediment  ?  That  was 
deposited  while  the  water  was  higher.  You  see  the 
driftwood  begins  to  strand,  too.  The  bank  helps 
in  other  ways.  Do  you  see  that  stump  on  the  false 
point?" 

"Ay,  ay,  sir." 

83 


MARK    TWAIN 

"Well,  the  water  is  just  up  to  the  roots  of  it.  You 
must  make  a  note  of  that." 

"Why?" 

"Because  that  means  that  there's  seven  feet  in  the 
chute  of  103.". 

"But  103  is  a  long  way  up  the  river  yet." 

"That's  where  the  benefit  of  the  bank  comes  in. 
There  is  water  enough  in  103  now,  yet  there  may  not 
be  by  the  time  we  get  there,  but  the  bank  will  keep 
us  posted  all  along.  You  don't  run  close  chutes 
on  a  falling  river,  up-stream,  and  there  are  precious 
few  of  them  that  you  are  allowed  to  run  at  all 
down-stream.  There's  a  law  of  the  United  States 
against  it.  The  river  may  be  rising  by  the  time  we 
get  to  103,  and  in  that  case  we'll  run  it.  We  are 
drawing — how  much?" 

"Six  feet  aft — six  and  a  half  forward." 

"Well,  you  do  seem  to  know  something." 

"But  what  I  particularly  want  to  know  is,  if  I 
have  got  to  keep  up  an  everlasting  measuring  of  the 
banks  of  this  river,  twelve  hundred  miles,  month  in 
and  month  out?" 

"Of  course!" 

My  emotions  were  too  deep  for  words  for  a  while. 
Presently  I  said : 

' '  And  how  about  these  chutes  ?  Are  there  many  of 
them?" 

"I  should  say  so!  I  fancy  we  sha'n't  run  any  of 
the  river  this  trip  as  you've  ever  seen  it  run  before — 
so  to  speak.  If  the  river  begins  to  rise  again,  we'll 
go  up  behind  bars  that  you've  always  seen  standing 
out  of  the  river,  high  and  dry,  like  a  roof  of  a  house; 
84 


LIFE    ON    THE    MISSISSIPPI 

we'll  cut  across  low  places  that  you've  never  noticed 
at  all,  right  through  the  middle  of  bars  that  cover 
three  hundred  acres  of  river;  we'll  creep  through 
cracks  where  you've  always  thought  was  solid  land; 
we'll  dart  through  the  woods  and  leave  twenty-five 
miles  of  river  off  to  one  side;  we'll  see  the  hind  side 
of  every  island  between  New  Orleans  and  Cairo." 

"Then  I've  got  to  go  to  work  and  learn  just  as 
much  more  river  as  I  already  know." 

"Just  about  twice  as  much  more,  as  near  as  you 
can  come  at  it." 

"Well,  one  lives  to  find  out.  I  think  I  was  a  fool 
when  I  went  into  this  business." 

"Yes,  that  is  true.  And  you  are  yet.  But  you'll 
not  be  when  you've  learned  it." 

"Ah,  I  never  can  learn  it!" 

"I  will  see  that  you  do." 

By  and  by  I  ventured  again : 

' '  Have  I  got  to  learn  all  this  thing  just  as  I  know 
the  rest  of  the  river — shapes  and  all — and  so  I  can 
run  it  at  night?" 

"Yes.  And  you've  got  to  have  good  fair  marks 
from  one  end  of  the  river  to  the  other,  that  will 
help  the  bank  tell  you  when  there  is  water  enough  in 
each  of  these  countless  places — like  that  stump,  you 
know.  When  the  river  first  begins  to  rise,  you  can 
run  half  a  dozen  of  the  deepest  of  them;  when  it  rises 
a  foot  more  you  can  run  another  dozen ;  the  next  foot 
will  add  a  couple  of  dozen,  and  so  on:  so  you  see 
you  have  to  know  your  banks  and  marks  to  a  dead 
moral  certainty,  and  never  get  them  mixed ;  for  when 
you  start  through  one  of  those  cracks,  there's  no 
85 


MARK     TWAIN 

backing  out  again,  as  there  is  in  the  big  river;  you've 
got  to  go  through,  or  stay  there  six  months  if  you 
get  caught  on  a  falling  river.  There  are  about  fifty 
of  these  cracks  which  you  can't  run  at  all  except 
when  the  river  is  brimful  and  over  the  banks." 
"This  new  lesson  is  a  cheerful  prospect." 
"Cheerful  enough.  And  mind  what  I've  just  told 
you;  when  you  start  into  one  of  those  places  you've 
got  to  go  through.  They  are  too  narrow  to  turn 
around  in,  too  crooked  to  back  out  of,  and  the  shoal 
water  is  always  up  at  the  head;  never  elsewhere.  And 
the  head  of  them  is  always  likely  to  be  filling  up, 
little  by  little,  so  that  the  marks  you  reckon  their 
depth  by,  this  season,  may  not  answer  for  next." 
"Learn  a  new  set,  then,  every  year?" 
"Exactly.  Cramp  her  up  to  the  bar!  What  are 
you  standing  up  through  the  middle  of  the  river  for?" 
The  next  few  months  showed  me  strange  things. 
On  the  same  day  that  we  held  the  conversation  above 
narrated  we  met  a  great  rise  coming  down  the  river. 
The  whole  vast  face  of  the  stream  was  black  with 
drifting  dead  logs,  broken  boughs,  and  great  trees 
that  had  caved  in  and  been  washed  away.  It  re- 
quired the  nicest  steering  to  pick  one's  way  through 
this  rushing  raft,  even  in  the  daytime,  when  crossing 
from  point  to  point;  and  at  night  the  difficulty  was 
mightily  increased;  every  now  and  then  a  huge  log, 
lying  deep  in  the  water,  would  suddenly  appear  right 
under  our  bows,  coming  head-on;  no  use  to  try  to 
avoid  it  then ;  we  could  only  stop  the  engines,  and  one 
wheel  would  walk  over  that  log  from  one  end  to  the 
other,  keeping  up  a  thundering  racket  and  careening 
86 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

the  boat  in  a  way  that  was  very  uncomfortable  to 
passengers.  Now  and  then  we  would  hit  one  of  these 
sunken  logs  a  rattling  bang,  dead  in  the  center,  with 
a  full  head  of  steam,  and  it  would  stun  the  boat  as 
if  she  had  hit  a  continent.  Sometimes  this  log  would 
lodge  and  stay  right  across  our  nose,  and  back  the 
Mississippi  up  before  it;  we  would  have  to  do  a 
little  crawfishing,  then,  to  get  away  from  the  obstruc- 
tion. We  often  hit  white  logs  in  the  dark,  for  we 
could  not  see  them  until  we  were  right  on  them,  but 
a  black  log  is  a  pretty  distinct  object  at  night.  A 
white  snag  is  an  ugly  customer  when  the  daylight 
is  gone. 

Of  course,  on  the  great  rise,  down  came  a  swarm 
of  prodigious  timber-rafts  from  the  headwaters  of  the 
Mississippi,  coal-barges  from  Pittsburg,  little  trading- 
scows  from  everywhere,  and  broadhorns  from  "Posey 
County,"  Indiana,  freighted  with  "fruit  and  furni- 
ture"— the  usual  term  for  describing  it,  though  in 
plain  English  the  freight  thus  aggrandized  was  hoop- 
poles  and  pumpkins.  Pilots  bore  a  mortal  hatred 
to  these  craft,  and  it  was  returned  with  usury.  The 
law  required  all  such  helpless  traders  to  keep  a  light 
burning,  but  it  was  a  law  that  was  often  broken. 
All  of  a  sudden,  on  a  murky  night,  a  light  would  hop 
up,  right  under  our  bows,  almost,  and  an  agonized 
voice,  with  the  backwoods  "whang"  to  it,  would 
wail  out : 

"Whar'n  the you  goin'  to!  Cain't  you  see 

nothin',  you  dash-dashed  aig-suckin',  sheep-stealin', 
one-eyed  son  of  a  stuffed  monkey!" 

Then  for  an  instant,  as  we  whistled  by,  the  red 
87 


MARK    TWAIN 

glare  from  our  furnaces  would  reveal  the  scow  and 
the  form  of  the  gesticulating  orator,  as  if  under  a 
lightning  flash,  and  in  that  instant  our  firemen  and 
deck-hands  would  send  and  receive  a  tempest  of 
missiles  and  profanity,  one  of  our  wheels  would  walk 
off  with  the  crashing  fragments  of  a  steering-oar,  and 
down  the  dead  blackness  would  shut  again.  And 
that  flatboatman  would  be  sure  to  go  into  New 
Orleans  and  sue  our  boat,  swearing  stoutly  that  he 
had  a  light  burning  all  the  time,  when  in  truth  his 
gang  had  the  lantern  down  below  to  sing  and  He  and 
drink  and  gamble  by,  and  no  watch  on  deck.  Once 
at  night,  in  one  of  those  forest-bordered  crevices 
(behind  an  island)  which  steamboatmen  intensely 
describe  with  the  phrase  "as  dark  as  the  inside  of  a 
cow,"  we  should  have  eaten  up  a  Posey  County 
family,  fruit,  furniture,  and  all,  but  that  they  hap- 
pened to  be  fiddling  down  below  and  we  just  caught 
the  sound  of  the  music  in  time  to  sheer  off,  doing  no 
serious  damage,  unfortunately,  but  coming  so  near 
it  that  we  had  good  hopes  for  a  moment.  These 
people  brought  up  their  lantern,  then,  of  course;  and 
as  we  backed  and  filled  to  get  away,  the  precious 
family  stood  in  the  light  of  it — both  sexes  and  various 
ages — and  cursed  us  till  everything  turned  blue. 
Once  a  coal-boatman  sent  a  bullet  through  our  pilot- 
house when  we  borrowed  a  steering-oar  of  him  in  a 
very  narrow  place. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE    RIVER    RISES 
/ 

DURING  this  big  rise  these  small-fry  craft  were 
an  intolerable  nuisance.  We  were  running 
chute  after  chute — a  new  world  to  me — and  if  there 
was  a  particularly  cramped  place  in  a  chute,  we 
would  be  pretty  sure  to  meet  a  broadhorn  there ;  and 
if  he  failed  to  be  there,  we  would  find  him  in  a  still 
worse  locality,  namely,  the  head  of  the  chute,  on  the 
shoal  water.  And  then  there  would  be  no  end  of 
profane  cordialities  exchanged. 

Sometimes,  in  the  big  river,  when  we  would  be 
feeling  our  way  cautiously  along  through  a  fog,  the 
deep  hush  would  suddenly  be  broken  by  yells  and  a 
clamor  of  tin  pans,  and  all  in  an  instant  a  log  raft 
would  appear  vaguely  through  the  webby  veil,  close 
upon  us;  and  then  we  did  not  wait  to  swap  knives, 
but  snatched  our  engine-bells  out  by  the  roots  and 
piled  on  all  the  steam  we  had,  to  scramble  out  of  the 
way!  One  doesn't  hit  a  rock  or  a  solid  log  raft  with 
a  steamboat  when  he  can  get  excused. 

You  will  hardly  believe  it,  but  many  steamboat 
clerks  always  carried  a  large  assortment  of  religious 
tracts  with  them  in  those  old  departed  steamboating 
days.  Indeed  they  did!  Twenty  times  a  day  we 
would  be  cramping  up  around  a  bar,  while  a  string 
89 


MARK     TWAIN 

of  these  small-fry  rascals  were  drifting  down  into 
the  head  of  the  bend  away  above  and  beyond  us  a 
couple  of  miles.  Now  a  skiff  would  dart  away  from 
one  of  them,  and  come  fighting  its  laborious  way 
across  the  desert  of  water.  It  would  "ease  all"  in 
the  shadow  of  our  forecastle,  and  the  panting  oars- 
men would  shout,  "Gimme  a  pa-a-per!"  as  the  skiff 
drifted  swiftly  astern.  The  clerk  would  throw  over 
a  file  of  New  Orleans  journals.  If  these  were  picked 
up  without  comment,  you  might  notice  that  now  a 
dozen  other  skiffs  had  been  drifting  down  upon  us 
without  saying  anything.  You  understand,  they  had 
been  waiting  to  see  how  No.  i  was  going  to  fare. 
No.  i  making  no  comment,  all  the  rest  would  bend 
to  their  oars  and  come  on,  now;  and  as  fast  as  they 
came  the  clerk  would  heave  over  neat  bundles  of 
religious  tracts,  tied  to  shingles.  The  amount  of 
hard  swearing  which  twelve  packages  of  religious 
literature  will  command  when  impartially  divided  up 
among  twelve  raftsmen's  crews,  who  have  pulled  a 
heavy  skiff  two  miles  on  a  hot  day  to  get  them,  is 
simply  incredible. 

As  I  have  said,  the  big  rise  brought  a  new  world 
under  my  vision.  By  the  time  the  river  was  over 
its  banks  we  had  forsaken  our  old  paths  and  were 
hourly  climbing  over  bars  that  had  stood  ten  feet 
out  of  water  before ;  we  were  shaving  stumpy  shores, 
like  that  at  the  foot  of  Madrid  Bend,  which  I  had 
always  seen  avoided  before;  we  were  clattering 
through  chutes  like  that  of  82,  where  the  opening  at 
the  foot  was  an  unbroken  wall  of  timber  till  our  nose 
was  almost  at  the  very  spot.  Some  of  these  chutes 
go 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

were  utter  solitudes.  The  dense,  untouched  forest 
overhung  both  banks  of  the  crooked  little  crack,  and 
one  could  believe  that  human  creatures  had  never 
intruded  there  before.  The  swinging  grape-vines, 
the  grassy  nooks  and  vistas  glimpsed  as  we  swept  by, 
the  flowering  creepers  waving  their  red  blossoms  from 
the  tops  of  dead  trunks,  and  all  the  spendthrift  rich- 
ness of  the  forest  foliage,  were  wasted  and  thrown 
away  there.  The  chutes  were  lovely  places  to  steer 
in;  they  were  deep,  except  at  the  head;  the  current 
was  gentle;  under  the  "points"  the  water  was  ab- 
solutely dead,  and  the  invisible  banks  so  bluff  that 
where  the  tender  willow  thickets  projected  you  could 
bury  your  boat's  broadside  in  them  as  you  tore 
along,  and  then  you  seemed  fairly  to  fly. 

Behind  other  islands  we  found  wretched  little 
farms,  and  wretcheder  little  log  cabins;  there  were 
crazy  rail  fences  sticking  a  foot  or  two  above  the 
water,  with  one  or  two  jeans-clad,  chills-racked, 
yellow-faced  male  miserables  roosting  on  the  top 
rail,  elbows' on  knees,  jaws  in  hands,  grinding  tobacco 
and  discharging  the  result  at  floating  chips  through 
crevices  left  by  lost  teeth ;  while  the  rest  of  the  family 
and  the  few  farm  animals  were  huddled  together  in 
an  empty  wood-flat  riding  at  her  moorings  close  at 
hand.  In  this  flatboat  the  family  would  have  to 
cook  and  eat  and  sleep  for  a  lesser  or  greater  number 
of  days  (or  possibly  weeks),  until  the  river  should 
fall  two  or  three  feet  and  let  them  get  back  to  their 
log  cabins  and  their  chills  again — chills  being  a 
merciful  provision  of  an  all-wise  Providence  to  enable 
them  to  take  exercise  without  exertion.  And  this 


MARK    TWAIN 

sort  of  watery  camping  out  was  a  thing  which  these 
people  were  rather  liable  to  be  treated  to  a  couple 
of  times  a  year:  by  the  December  rise  out  of  the 
Ohio,  and  the  June  rise  out  of  the  Mississippi.  And 
yet  these  were  kindly  dispensations,  for  they  at 
least  enabled  the  poor  things  to  rise  from  the  dead 
now  and  then,  and  look  upon  life  when  a  steamboat 
went  by.  They  appreciated  the  blessing,  too,  for 
they  spread  their  mouths  and  eyes  wide  open  and 
made  the  most  of  these  occasions.  Now  what  could 
these  banished  creatures  find  to  do  to  keep  from 
dying  of  the  blues  during  the  low- water  season ! 

Once,  in  one  of  these  lovely  island  chutes,  we  found 
our  course  completely  bridged  by  a  great  fallen  tree. 
This  will  serve  to  show  how  narrow  some  of  the 
chutes  were.  The  passengers  had  an  hour's  recrea- 
tion in  a  virgin  wilderness,  while  the  boat-hands 
chopped  the  bridge  away;  for  there  was  no  such  thing 
as  turning  back,  you  comprehend. 

From  Cairo  to  Baton  Rouge,  when  the  river  is 
over  its  banks,  you  have  no  particular  trouble  in 
the  night ;  for  the  thousand-mile  wall  of  dense  forest 
that  guards  the  two  banks  all  the  way  is  only  gapped 
with  a  farm  or  woodyard  opening  at  intervals,  and 
so  you  can't  "get  out  of  the  river"  much  easier  than 
you  could  get  out  of  a  fenced  lane;  but  from  Baton 
Rouge  to  New  Orleans  it  is  a  different  matter.  The 
river  is  more  than  a  mile  wide,  and  very  deep — as 
much  as  two  hundred  feet,  in  places.  Both  banks, 
for  a  good  deal  over  a  hundred  miles,  are  shorn  of 
their  timber  and  bordered  by  continuous  sugar- 
plantations,  with  only  here  and  there  a  scattering 
92 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

sapling  or  row  of  ornamental  China  trees.  The  tim- 
ber is  shown  off  clear  to  the  rear  of  the  plantations, 
from  two  to  four  miles.  When  the  first  frost  threat- 
ens to  come,  the  planters  snatch  off  their  crops  in  a 
hurry.  When  they  have  finished  grinding  the  cane, 
they  form  the  refuse  of  the  stalks  (which  they  call 
bagasse)  into  great  piles  and  set  fire  to  them,  though 
in  other  sugar  countries  the  bagasse  is  used  for  fuel 
in  the  furnaces  of  the  sugar-mills.  Now  the  piles 
of  damp  bagasse  burn  slowly,  and  smoke  like  Satan's 
own  kitchen. 

An  embankment  ten  or  fifteen  feet  high  guards 
both  banks  of  the  Mississippi  all  the  way  down  that 
lower  end  of  the  river,  and  this  embankment  is  set 
back  from  the  edge  of  the  shore  from  ten  to  perhaps 
a  hundred  feet,  according  to  circumstances;  say 
thirty  or  forty  feet,  as  a  general  thing.  Fill  that 
whole  region  with  an  impenetrable  gloom  of  smoke 
from  a  hundred  miles  of  burning  bagasse  piles,  when 
the  river  is  over  the  banks,  and  turn  a  steamboat 
loose  along  there  at  midnight  and  see  how  she  will 
feel.  And  see  how  you  will  feel,  too!  You  find 
yourself  away  out  in  the  midst  of  a  vague,  dim  sea 
that  is  shoreless,  that  fades  out  and  loses  itself  in 
the  murky  distances ;  for  you  cannot  discern  the  thin 
rib  of  embankment,  and  you  are  always  imagining 
you  see  a  straggling  tree  when  you  don't.  The 
plantations  themselves  are  transformed  by  the  smoke, 
and  look  like  a  part  of  the  sea.  All  through  your 
watch  you  are  tortured  with  the  exquisite  misery 
of  uncertainty.  You  hope  you  are  keeping  in  the 
river,  but  you  do  not  know.  All  that  you  are  sure 
93 


'MARK     TWAIN 

about  is  that'  you  are  likely  to  be  within  six  feet  of 
the  bank  and  destruction,  when  you  think  you  are 
a  good  half-mile  from  shore.  And  you  are  sure,  also, 
that  if  you  chance  suddenly  to  fetch  up  against  the 
embankment  and  topple  your  chimneys  overboard, 
you  will  have  the  small  comfort  of  knowing  that  it 
is  about  what  you  were  expecting  to  do.  One  of  the 
great  Vicksburg  packets  darted  out  into  a  sugar- 
plantation  one  night,  at  such  a  time,  and  had  to 
stay  there  a  week.  But  there  was  no  novelty  about 
it;  it  had  often  been  done  before.  - 

I  thought  I  had  finished  this  chapter,  but  I  wish 
to  add  a  curious  thing,  while  it  is  in  my  mind.  It 
is  only  relevant  in  that  it  is  connected  with  piloting. 
There  used  to  be  an  excellent  pilot  on  the  river,  a 
Mr.  X,  who  was  a  somnambulist.  It  was  said  that 
if  his  mind  was  troubled  about  a  bad  piece  of  river, 
he  was  pretty  sure  to  get  up  and  walk  in  his  sleep 
and  do  strange  things.  He  was  once  fellow-pilot  for 
a  trip  or  two  with  George  Ealer,  on  a  great  New 
Orleans  passenger  -  packet.  During  a  considerable 
part  of  the  first  trip  George  was  uneasy,  but  got  over 
it  by  and  by,  as  X  seemed  content  to  stay  in  his  bed 
when  asleep.  Late  one  night  the  boat  was  approach- 
ing Helena,  Ark. ;  the  water  was  low,  and  the  crossing 
above  the  town  in  a  very  blind  and  tangled  condition. 
X  had  seen  the  crossing  since  Ealer  had,  and  as  the 
night  was  particularly  drizzly,  sullen,  and  dark, 
Ealer  was  considering  whether  he  had  not  better 
have  X  called  to  assist  in  running  the  place,  when 
the  door  opened  and  X  walked  in.  Now,  on  very 
dark  nights,  light  is  a  deadly  enemy  to  piloting;  you 
94 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

are  aware  that  if  you  stand  in  a  lighted  room,  on 
such  a  night,  you  cannot  see  things  in  the  street  to 
any  purpose ;  but  if  you  put  out  the  lights  and  stand 
in  the  gloom  you  can  make  out  objects  in  the  street 
pretty  well.  So,  on  very  dark  nights,  pilots  do  not 
smoke ;  they  allow  no  fire  in  the  pilot-house  stove,  if 
there  is  a  crack  which  can  allow  the  least  ray  to 
escape;  they  order  the  furnaces  to  be  curtained 
with  huge  tarpaulins  and  the  skylights  to  be  close- 
ly blinded.  Then  no  light  whatever  issues  from 
the  boat.  The  undefmable  shape  that  now  en- 
tered the  pilot-house  had  Mr.  X's  voice.  This 
said: 

"Let  me  take  her,  George;  I've  seen  this  place 
since  you  have,  and  it  is  so  crooked  that  I  reckon 
I  can  run  it  myself  easier  than  I  could  tell  you  how 
to  do  it." 

"It  is  kind  of  you,  and  I  swear  /  am  willing. 
I  haven't  got  another  drop  of  perspiration  left  in  me. 
I  have  been  spinning  around  and  around  the  wheel 
like  a  squirrel.  It  is  so  dark  I  can't  tell  which  way 
she  is  swinging  till  she  is  coming  around  like  a 
whirligig." 

So  Ealer  took  a  seat  on  the  bench,  panting  and 
breathless.  The  black  phantom  assumed  the  wheel 
without  saying  anything,  steadied  the  waltzing 
steamer  with  a  turn  or  two,  and  then  stood  at  ease, 
coaxing  her  a  little  to  this  side  and  then  to  that,  as 
gently  and  as  sweetly  as  if  the  time  had  been  noon- 
day. When  Ealer  observed  this  marvel  of  steering, 
he  wished  he  had  not  confessed!  He  stared,  and 
wondered,  and  finally  said: 
95 


MARK     TWAIN 

"Well,  I  thought  I  knew  how  to  steer  a  steam- 
boat, but  that  was  another  mistake  of  mine." 

X  said  nothing,  but  went  serenely  on  with  his 
work.  He  rang  for  the  leads;  he  rang  to  slow  down 
the  steam;  he  worked  the  boat  carefully  and  neatly 
into  invisible  marks,  then  stood  at  the  center  of  the 
wheel  and  peered  blandly  out  into  the  blackness,  fore 
and  aft,  to  verify  his  position;  as  the  leads  shoaled 
more  and  more,  he  stopped  the  engines  entirely,  and 
the  dead  silence  and  suspense  of  "drifting"  followed; 
when  the  shoalest  water  was  struck,  he  cracked  on 
the  steam,  carried  her  handsomely  over,  and  then 
began  to  work  her  warily  into  the  next  system  of 
shoal-marks;  the  same  patient,  heedful  use  of  leads 
and  engines  followed,  the  boat  slipped  through  with- 
out touching  bottom,  and  entered  upon  the  third 
and  last  intricacy  of  the  crossing;  imperceptibly  she 
moved  through  the  gloom,  crept  by  inches  into  her 
marks,  drifted  tediously  till  the  shoalest  water  was 
cried,  and  then,  under  a  tremendous  head  of  steam, 
went  swinging  over  the  reef  and  away  into  deep 
water  and  safety! 

Ealer  let  his  long-pent  breath  pour  in  a  great 
relieving  sigh,  and  said: 

"That's  the  sweetest  piece  of  piloting  that  was 
ever  done  on  the  Mississippi  River!  I  wouldn't 
believe  it  could  be  done,  if  I  hadn't  seen  it." 

There  was  no  reply,  and  he  added: 

"Just  hold  her  five  minutes  longer,  partner,  and 
let  me  run  down  and  get  a  cup  of  coffee." 

A  minute  later  Ealer  was  biting  into  a  pie,  down 
in  the  "texas,"  and  comforting  himself  with  coffee. 
96 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

Just  then  the  night  watchman  happened  in,  and  was 
about  to  happen  out  again,  when  he  noticed  Ealer 
and  exclaimed : 

"Who  is  at  the  wheel,  sir?" 

"X." 

"Dart  for  the  pilot-house,  quicker  than  lightning!" 

The  next  moment  both  men  were  flying  up  the 
pilot-house  companionway,  three  steps  at  a  jump! 
Nobody  there!  The  great  steamer  was  whistling 
down  the  middle  of  the  river  at  her  own  sweet  will! 
The  watchman  shot  out  of  the  place  again;  Ealer 
seized  the  wheel,  set  an  engine  back  with  power, 
and  held  his  breath  while  the  boat  reluctantly  swung 
away  from  a  "towhead,"  which  she  was  about  to 
knock  into  the  middle  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico ! 

By  and  by  the  watchman  came  back  and  said: 

"Didn't  that  lunatic  tell  you  he  was  asleep,  when 
he  first  came  up  here?" 

"No." 

"Well,  he  was.  I  found  him  walking  along  on  top 
of  the  railings,  just  as  unconcerned  as  another  man 
would  walk  a  pavement ;  and  I  put  him  to  bed ;  now 
just  this  minute  there  he  was  again,  away  astern, 
going  through  that  sort  of  tight-rope  deviltry  the 
same  as  before." 

"Well,  I  think  I'll  stay  by  next  time  he  has  one 
of  those  fits.  But  I  hope  he'll  have  them  often. 
You  just  ought  to  have  seen  him  take  this  boat 
through  Helena  crossing.  I  never  saw  anything  so 
gaudy  before.  And  if  he  can  do  such  gold-leaf,  kid- 
glove,  diamond-breastpin  piloting  when  he  is  sound 
asleep,  what  couldn't  he  do  if  he  was  dead!" 
97 


CHAPTER  XII 

SOUNDING 

WHEN  the  river  is  very  low,  and  one's  steam- 
boat is ' '  drawing  all  the  water  "  there  is  in  the 
channel — or  a  few  inches  more,  as  was  often  the  case 
in  the  old  times — one  must  be  painfully  circumspect 
in  his  piloting.  We  used  to  have  to  ' '  sound ' '  a  num- 
ber of  particularly  bad  places  almost  every  trip  when 
the  river  was  at  a  very  low  stage. 

Sounding  is  done  in  this  way:  The  boat  ties  up 
at  the  shore,  just  above  the  shoal  crossing;  the  pilot 
not  on  watch  takes  his  "cub"  or  steersman  and  a 
picked  crew  of  men  (sometimes  an  officer  also),  and 
goes  out  in  the  yawl — provided  the  boat  has  not  that 
rare  and  sumptuous  luxury,  a  regularly  devised 
"sounding-boat" — and  proceeds  to  hunt  for  the  best 
water,  the  pilot  on  duty  watching  his  movements 
through  a  spy-glass,  meantime,  and  in  some  in- 
stances assisting  by  signals  of  the  boat's  whistle, 
signifying  "try  higher  up"  or  "try  lower  down"; 
for  the  surface  of  the  water,  like  an  oil-painting,  is 
more  expressive  and  intelligible  when  inspected  from 
a  little  distance  than  very  close  at  hand.  The  whistle 
signals  are  seldom  necessary,  however;  never,  per- 
haps, except  when  the  wind  confuses  the  significant 
ripples  upon  the  water's  surface.  When  the  yawl 
98 


LIFE     ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

has  reached  the  shoal  place,  the  speed  is  slackened, 
the  pilot  begins  to  sound  the  depth  with  a  pole 
ten  or  twelve  feet  long,  and  the  steersman  at  the 
tiller  obeys  the  order  to  "hold  her  up  to  starboard"; 
or  "let  her  fall  off  to  larboard  "  j1  or  "steady — steady 
as  you  go." 

When  the  measurements  indicate  that  the  yawl  is 
approaching  the  shoalest  part  of  the  reef,  the  com- 
mand is  given  to  "Ease  all!"  Then  the  men  stop 
rowing  and  the  yawl  drifts  with  the  current.  The 
next  order  is,  "Stand  by  with  the  buoy!"  The  mo- 
ment the  shallowest  point  is  reached,  the  pilot  de- 
livers the  order,  "Let  go  the  buoy!"  and  over  she 
goes.  If  the  pilot  is  not  satisfied,  he  sounds  the 
place  again;  if  he  finds  better  water  higher  up  or 
lower  down,  he  removes  the  buoy  to  that  place. 
Being  finally  satisfied,  he  gives  the  order,  and  all 
the  men  stand  their  oars  straight  up  in  the  air,  in 
line;  a  blast  from  the  boat's  whistle  indicates  that 
the  signal  has  been  seen;  then  the  men  "give  way" 
on  their  oars  and  lay  the  yawl  alongside  the  buoy; 
the  steamer  comes  creeping  carefully  down,  is  pointed 
straight  at  the  buoy,  husbands  her  power  for  the 
coming  struggle,  and  presently,  at  the  critical  mo- 
ment, turns  on  all  her  steam  and  goes  grinding  and 
wallowing  over  the  buoy  and  the  sand,  and  gains  the 
deep  water  beyond.  Or  maybe  she  doesn't;  maybe 
she  "strikes  and  swings."  Then  she  has  to  while 
away  several  hours  (or  days)  sparring  herself  off. 

Sometimes  a  buoy  is  not  laid  at  all,  but  the  yawl 

^he  term  "larboard"  is  never  used  at  sea,  now,  to  signify  the  left 
hand ;  but  was  always  used  on  the  river  in  my  time. 

99 


MARK    TWAIN 

goes  ahead,  hunting  the  best  water,  and  the  steamer 
follows  along  in  its  wake.  Often  there  is  a  deal  of 
fun  and  excitement  about  sounding,  especially  if  it 
is  a  glorious  summer  day,  or  a  blustering  night. 
But  in  winter  the  cold  and  the  peril  take  most  of 
the  fun  out  of  it. 

A  buoy  is  nothing  but  a  board  four  or  five  feet 
long,  with  one  end  turned  up ;  it  is  a  reversed  school- 
house  bench,  with  one  of  the  supports  left  and  the 
other  removed.  It  is  anchored  on  the  shoalest  part 
of  the  reef  by  a  rope  with  a  heavy  stone  made  fast 
to  the  end  of  it.  But  for  the  resistance  of  the  turned- 
up  end  of  the  reversed  bench,  the  current  would  pull 
the  buoy  under  water.  At  night,  a  paper  lantern 
with  a  candle  in  it  is  fastened  on  top  of  the  buoy, 
and  this  can  be  seen  a  mile  or  more,  a  little  glimmer- 
ing spark  in  the  waste  of  blackness. 

Nothing  delights  a  cub  so  much  as  an  opportunity 
to  go  out  sounding.  There  is  such  an  air  of  adven- 
ture about  it;  often  there  is  danger;  it  is  so  gaudy 
and  man-of-war-like  to  sit  up  in  the  stern-sheets  and 
steer  a  swift  yawl ;  there  is  something  fine  about  the 
exultant  spring  of  the  boat  when  an  experienced 
old  sailor  crew  throw  their  souls  into  the  oars;  it  is 
lovely  to  see  the  white  foam  stream  away  from  the 
bows;  there  is  music  in  the  rush  of  the  water;  it  is 
deliciously  exhilarating,  in  summer,  to  go  speeding 
over  the  breezy  expanses  of  the  river  when  the  world 
of  wavelets  is  dancing  in  the  sun.  It  is  such  grand- 
eur, too,  to  the  cub,  to  get  a  chance  to  give  an  order; 
for  often  the  pilot  will  simply  say,  "Let  her  go 
about!"  and  leave  the  rest  to  the  cub,  who  instantly 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

cries,  in  his  sternest  tone  of  command,  "Ease,  star- 
board! Strong  on  the  larboard!  Starboard,  give 
way!  With  a  will,  men!"  The  cub  enjoys  sound- 
ing for  the  further  reason  that  the  eyes  of  the  pas- 
sengers are  watching  all  the  yawl's  movements  with 
absorbing  interest,  if  the  time  be  daylight;  and  if 
it  be  night,  he  knows  that  those  same  wondering  eyes 
are  fastened  upon  the  yawl's  lantern  as  it  glides  out 
into  the  gloom  and  dims  away  in  the  remote  dis- 
tance. 

One  trip  a  pretty  girl  of  sixteen  spent  her  time  in 
our  pilot-house  with  her  uncle  and  aunt,  every  day 
and  all  day  long.  I  fell  in  love  with  her.  So  did 
Mr.  Thornburg's  cub,  Tom  G.  Tom  and  I  had  been 
bosom  friends  until  this  time';  but  now  a  coolness 
began  to  arise.  I  told  the  girl  a  good  many  of  my 
river  adventures,  and  made  myself  out  a  good  deal 
of  a  hero;  Tom  tried  to  make  himself  appear  to  be 
a  hero,  too,  and  succeeded  to  some  extent,  but  then 
he  always  had  a  way  of  embroidering.  However, 
virtue  is  its  own  reward,  so  I  was  a  barely  perceptible 
trifle  ahead  in  the  contest.  About  this  time  some- 
thing happened  which  promised  handsomely  for  me : 
the  pilots  decided  to  sound  the  crossing  at  the  head 
of  21.  This  would  occur  about  nine  or  ten  o'clock 
at  night,  when  the  passengers  would  be  still  up;  it 
would  be  Mr.  Thornburg's  watch,  therefore  my  chief 
would  have  to  do  the  sounding.  We  had  a  perfect 
love  of  a  sounding-boat — long,  trim,  graceful,  and  as 
fleet  as  a  greyhound;  her  thwarts  were  cushioned; 
she  carried  twelve  oarsmen;  one  of  the  mates  was 
always  sent  in  her  to  transmit  orders  to  her  crew, 
101 


MARK     TWAIN 

for  ours  was  a  steamer  where  no  end  of  "style"  was 
put  on. 

We  tied  up  at  the  shore  above  21,  and  got  ready. 
It  was  a  foul  night,  and  the  river  was  so  wide, 
there,  that  a  landsman's  uneducated  eyes  could  dis- 
cern no  opposite  shore  through  such  a  gloom.  The 
passengers  were  alert  and  interested;  everything 
was  satisfactory.  As  I  hurried  through  the  engine- 
room,  picturesquely  gotten  up  in  storm  toggery,  I 
met  Tom,  and  could  not  forbear  delivering  myself 
of  a  mean  speech : 

"Ain't  you  glad  you  don't  have  to  go  out  sound- 
ing?" 

Tom  was  passing  on,  but  he  quickly  turned,  and 
said: 

"Now  just  for  that,  you  can  go  and  get  the 
sounding-pole  yourself.  I  was  going  after  it,  but 
I'd  see  you  in  Halifax,  now,  before  I'd  do  it." 

"Who  wants  you  to  get  it?  I  don't.  It's  in  the 
sounding-boat." 

"It  ain't,  either.  It's  been  new-painted;  and  it's 
been  up  on  the  ladies'  cabin-guards  two  days,  drying." 

I  flew  back,  and  shortly  arrived  among  the  crowd 
of  watching  and  wondering  ladies  just  in  time  to  hear 
the  command : 

"Give  way,  men!" 

I  looked  over,  and  there  was  the  gallant  sounding* 
boat  booming  away,  the  unprincipled  Tom  presiding 
at  the  tiller,  and  my  chief  sitting  by  him  with  the 
sounding-pole  which  I  had  been  sent  on  a  fool's 
errand  to  fetch.  Then  that  young  girl  said  to  me: 

"Oh,  how  awful  to  have  to  go  out  in  that  little 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

boat  on  such  a  night!  Do  you  think  there  is  any 
danger?" 

I  would  rather  have  been  stabbed.  I  went  off, 
full  of  venom,  to  help  in  the  pilot-house.  By  and  by 
the  boat's  lantern  disappeared,  and  after  an  interval 
a  wee  spark  glimmered  upon  the  face  of  the  water 
a  mile  away.  Mr.  Thornburg  blew  the  whistle  in 
acknowledgment,  backed  the  steamer  out,  and  made 
for  it.  We  flew  along  for  a  while,  then  slackened 
steam  and  went  cautiously  gliding  toward  the  spark. 
Presently  Mr.  Thornburg  exclaimed : 

"Hello,  the  buoy  lantern's  out!" 

He  stopped  the  engines.  A  moment  or  two  later 
he  said : 

"Why,  there  it  is  again!" 

So  he  came  ahead  on  the  engines  once  more,  and 
rang  for  the  leads.  Gradually  the  water  shoaled  up, 
and  then  began  to  deepen  again!  Mr.  Thornburg 
muttered : 

"Well,  I  don't  understand  this.  I  believe  that 
buoy  has  drifted  off  the  reef.  Seems  to  be  a  little 
too  far  to  the  left.  No  matter,  it  is  safest  to  run 
over  it,  anyhow." 

So,  in  that  solid  world  of  darkness  we  went  creep- 
ing down  on  the  light.  Just  as  our  bows  were  in 
the  act  of  plowing  over  it,  Mr.  Thornburg  seized  the 
bell-ropes,  rang  a  startling  peal,  and  exclaimed: 

"My  soul,  it's  the  sounding-boat!" 

A  sudden  chorus  of  wild  alarms  burst  out  far 
below — a  pause — and  then  a  sound  of  grinding  and 
crashing  followed.  Mr.  Thornburg  exclaimed: 

"There!  the  paddle-wheel  has  ground  the  sound- 
103 


MARK    TWAIN 

ing -boat  to  lucifer  matches!     Run!     See  who  is 
killed!" 

I  was  on  the  main-deck  in  the  twinkling  of  an 
eye.  My  chief  and  the  third  mate  and  nearly  all 
the  men  were  safe.  They  had  discovered  their 
danger  when  it  was  too  late  to  pull  out  of  the  way; 
then,  when  the  great  guards  overshadowed  them  a 
moment  later,  they  were  prepared  and  knew  what  to 
do;  at  my  chief's  order  they  sprang  at  the  right 
instant,  seized  the  guard,  and  were  hauled  aboard. 
The  next  moment  the  sounding-yawl  swept  aft  to  the 
wheel  and  was  struck  and  splintered  to  atoms.  Two 
of  the  men  and  the  cub  Tom  were  missing — a  fact 
which  spread  like  wildfire  over  the  boat.  The 
passengers  came  flocking  to  the  forward  gangway, 
ladies  and  all,  anxious-eyed,  white-faced,  and  talked 
in  awed  voices  of  the  dreadful  thing.  And  often  and 
again  I  heard  them  say,  "Poor  fellows!  poor  boy, 
poor  boy!" 

By  this  time  the  boat's  yawl  was  manned  and 
away,  to  search  for  the  missing.  Now  a  faint  call 
was  heard,  off  to  the  left.  The  yawl  had  disappeared 
in  the  other  direction.  Half  the  people  rushed  to 
one  side  to  encourage  the  swimmer  with  their  shouts; 
the  other  half  rushed  the  other  way  to  shriek  to  the 
yawl  to  turn  about.  By  the  callings  the  swimmer 
was  approaching,  but  some  said  the  sound  showed 
failing  strength.  The  crowd  massed  themselves 
against  the  boiler-deck  railings,  leaning  over  and 
staring  into  the  gloom;  and  every  faint  and  fainter 
cry  wrung  from  them  such  words  as  "Ah,  poor  fel- 
low, poor  fellow!  is  there  no  way  to  save  him?" 
104 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

But  still  the  cries  held  out,  and  drew  nearer,  and 
presently  the  voice  said  pluckily : 

"I  can  make  it!     Stand  by  with  a  rope!" 

What  a  rousing  cheer  they  gave  him!  The  chief 
mate  took  his  stand  in  the  glare  of  a  torch-basket, 
a  coil  of  rope  in  his  hand,  and  his  men  grouped  about 
him.  The  next  moment  the  swimmer's  face  ap- 
peared in  the  circle  of  light,  and  in  another  one  the 
owner  of  it  was  hauled  aboard,  limp  and  drenched, 
while  cheer  on  cheer  went  up.  It  was  that  devil  Tom. 

The  yawl  crew  searched  everywhere,  but  found  no 
sign  of  the  two  men.  They  probably  failed  to  catch 
the  guard,  tumbled  back,  and  were  struck  by  the 
wheel  and  killed.  Tom  had  never  jumped  for  the 
guard  at  all,  but  had  plunged  head  first  into  the  river 
and  dived  under  the  wheel.  It  was  nothing;  I  could 
have  done  it  easy  enough,  and  I  said  so;  but  every- 
body went  on  just  the  same,  making  a  wonderful 
to-do  over  that  ass,  as  if  he  had  done  something 
great.  That  girl  couldn't  seem  to  have  enough  of 
that  pitiful  "hero"  the  rest  of  the  trip;  but  little  I 
cared;  I  loathed  her,  anyway. 

The  way  we  came  to  mistake  the  sounding-boat's 
lantern  for  the  buoy  light  was  this :  My  chief  said 
that  after  laying  the  buoy  he  fell  away  and  watched 
it  till  it  seemed  to  be  secure;  then  he  took  up  a  po- 
sition a  hundred  yards  below  it  and  a  little  to  one 
side  of  the  steamer's  course,  headed  the  sounding- 
boat  up-stream,  and  waited.  Having  to  wait  some 
time,  he  and  the  officer  got  to  talking;  he  looked  up 
when  he  judged  that  the  steamer  was  about  on  the 
reef;  saw  that  the  buoy  was  gone,  but  supposed  that 
105 


MARK     TWAIN 

the  steamer  had  already  run  over  it ;  he  went  on  with 
his  talk;  he  noticed  that  the  steamer  was  getting  very 
close  down  to  him,  but  that  was  the  correct  thing; 
it  was  her  business  to  shave  him  closely,  for  con- 
venience in  taking  him  aboard;  he  was  expecting  her 
to  sheer  off,  until  the  last  moment;  then  it  flashed 
upon  him  that  she  was  trying  to  run  him  down,  mis- 
taking his  lantern  for  the  buoy  light ;  so  he  sang  out, 
"Stand  by  to  spring  for  the  guard,  men!"  and  the 
next  instant  the  jump  was  made. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
A  PILOT'S  NEEDS 

BUT  I  am  wandering  from  what  I  was  intending 
to  do;  that  is,  make  plainer  than  perhaps  ap- 
pears in  the  previous  chapters  some  of  the  peculiar 
requirements  of  the  science  of  piloting.  First  of  all, 
there  is  one  faculty  which  a  pilot  must  incessantly 
cultivate  until  he  has  brought  it  to  absolute  per- 
fection. Nothing  short  of  perfection  will  do.  That 
faculty  is  memory.  He  cannot  stop  with  merely 
thinking  a  thing  is  so  and  so;  he  must  know  it;  for 
this  is  eminently  one  of  the  "exact"  sciences.  With 
what  scorn  a  pilot  was  looked  upon,  in  the  old  times, 
if  he  ever  ventured  to  deal  in  that  feeble  phrase 
"I  think,"  instead  of  the  vigorous  one,  "I  know!" 
One  cannot  easily  realize  what  a  tremendous  thing 
it  is  to  know  every  trivial  detail  of  twelve  hundred 
miles  of  river  and  know  it  with  absolute  exactness. 
If  you  will  take  the  longest  street  in  New  York,  and 
travel  up  and  down  it,  conning  its  features  patiently 
until  you  know  every  house  and  window  and  lamp- 
post and  big  and  little  sign  by  heart,  and  know  them 
so  accurately  that  you  can  instantly  name  the  one 
you  are  abreast  of  when  you  are  set  down  at  random 
in  that  street  in  the  middle  of  an  inky  black  night, 
you  will  then  have  a  tolerable  notion  of  the  amount 
107 


MARK:  TWAIN 

and  the  exactness  of  a  pilot's  knowledge  who  carries 
the  Mississippi  River  in  his  head.  And  then,  if  you 
will  go  on  until  you  know  every  street-crossing,  the 
character,  size,  and  position  of  the  crossing-stones, 
and  the  varying  depth  of  mud  in  each  of  these  num- 
berless places,  you  will  have  some  idea  of  what  the 
pilot  must  know  in  order  to  keep  a  Mississippi 
steamer  out  of  trouble.  Next,  if  you  will  take  half 
of  the  signs  in  that  long  street,  and  change  their  places 
once  a  month,  and  still  manage  to  know  their  new 
positions  accurately  on  dark  nights,  and  keep  up 
with  these  repeated  changes  without  making  any 
mistakes,  you  will  understand  what  is  required  of  a 
pilot's  peerless  memory  by  the  fickle  Mississippi. 

I  think  a  pilot's  memory  is  about  the  most  won- 
derful thing  in  the  world.  To  know  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments  by  heart,  and  be  able  to  recite  them 
glibly,  forward  or  backward,  or  begin  at  random  any- 
where in  the  book  and  recite  both  ways  and  never 
trip  or  make  a  mistake,  is  no  extravagant  mass  of 
knowledge,  and  no  marvelous  facility,  compared  to 
a  pilot's  massed  knowledge  of  the  Mississippi  and  his 
marvelous  facility  in  the  handling  of  it.  I  make  this 
comparison  deliberately,  and  believe  I  am  not  ex- 
panding the  truth  when  I  do  it.  Many  will  think 
my  figure  too  strong,  but  pilots  will  not. 

And  how  easily  and  comfortably  the  pilot's  mem- 
ory does  its  work;  how  placidly  effortless  is  its  way; 
how  unconsciously  it  lays  up  its  vast  stores,  hour  by 
hour,  day  by  day,  and  never  loses  or  mislays  a  single 
valuable  package  of  them  all!  Take  an  instance. 
Let  a  leadsman  cry,  "Half  twain!  half  twain!  half 
108 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

twain!  half  twain!  half  twain!"  until  it  becomes  as 
monotonous  as  the  ticking  of  a  clock;  let  conversation 
be  going  on  all  the  time,  and  the  pilot  be  doing  his 
share  of  the  talking,  and  no  longer  consciously  listen- 
ing to  the  leadsman ;  and  in  the  midst  of  this  endless 
string  of  half  t wains  let  a  single  "quarter  twain!" 
be  interjected,  without  emphasis,  and  then  the  half- 
twain  cry  go  on  again,  just  as  before:  two  or  three 
weeks  later  that  pilot  can  describe  with  precision  the 
boat's  position  in  the  river  when  that  quarter  twain 
was  uttered,  and  give  you  such  a  lot  of  head-marks, 
stern-marks,  and  side-marks  to  guide  you,  that  you 
ought  to  be  able  to  take  the  boat  there  and  put  her 
in  that  same  spot  again  yourself !  The  cry  of  ' '  quar- 
ter twain"  did  not  really  take  his  mind  from  his 
talk,  but  his  trained  faculties  instantly  photographed 
the  bearings,  noted  the  change  of  depth,  and  laid 
up  the  important  details  for  future  reference  without 
requiring  any  assistance  from  him  in  the  matter.  If 
you  were  walking  and  talking  with  a  friend,  and 
another  friend  at  your  side  kept  up  a  monotonous 
repetition  of  the  vowel  sound  A,  for  a  couple  of 
blocks,  and  then  in  the  midst  interjected  an  R,  thus, 
A,  A,  A,  A,  A,  R,  A,  A,  A,  etc.,  and  gave  the  R  no 
emphasis,  you  would  not  be  able  to  state,  two  or 
three  weeks  afterward,  that  the  R  had  been  put  in, 
nor  be  able  to  tell  what  objects  you  were  passing 
at  the  moment  it  was  done.  But  you  could  if  your 
memory  had  been  patiently  and  laboriously  trained 
to  do  that  sort  of  thing  mechanically. 

Give  a  man  a  tolerably  fair  memory  to  start  with, 
and  piloting  will  develop  it  into  a  very  colossus  of 
109 


MARK    TWAIN 

capability.  But  only  in  the  matters  it  is  daily  drilled 
in.  A  time  would  come  when  the  man's  faculties 
could  not  help  noticing  landmarks  and  soundings, 
and  his  memory  could  not  help  holding  on  to  them 
with  the  grip  of  a  vise;  but  if  you  asked  that  same 
man  at  noon  what  he  had  had  for  breakfast,  it  would 
be  ten  chances  to  one  that  he  could  not  tell  you. 
Astonishing  things  can  be  done  with  the  human 
memory  if  you  will  devote  it  faithfully  to  one  par- 
ticular line  of  business. 

At  the  time  that  wages  soared  so  high  on  the 
Missouri  River,  my  chief,  Mr.  Bixby,  went  up  there 
and  learned  more  than  a  thousand  miles  of  that 
stream  with  an  ease  and  rapidity  that  were  astonish- 
ing. When  he  had  seen  each  division  once  in  the  day- 
time and  once  at  night,  his  education  was  so  nearly 
complete  that  he  took  out  a  "daylight"  license;  a 
few  trips  later  he  took  out  a  full  license,  and  went 
to  piloting  day  and  night — and  he  ranked  A  i,  too. 

Mr.  Bixby  placed  me  as  steersman  for  a  while 
under  a  pilot  whose  feats  of  memory  were  a  constant 
marvel  to  me.  However,  his  memory  was  born  in 
him,  I  think,  not  built.  For  instance,  somebody 
would  mention  a  name.  Instantly  Mr.  Brown  would 
break  in : 

"Oh,  I  knew  him.  Sallow-faced,  red-headed  fel- 
low, with  a  little  scar  on  the  side  of  his  throat,  like  a 
splinter  under  the  flesh.  He  was  only  in  the  South- 
ern trade  six  months.  That  was  thirteen  years  ago. 
I  made  a  trip  with  him.  There  was  five  feet  in  the 
upper  river  then;  the  Henry  Blake  grounded  at  the 
foot  of  Tower  Island  drawing  four  and  a  half;  the 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

George  Elliott  unshipped  her  rudder  on  the  wreck  of 
the  Sunflower — " 

"Why,  the  Sunflower  didn't  sink  until — " 
"7  know  when  she  sunk;  it  was  three  years  before 
that,  on  the  2d  of  December;  Asa  Hardy  was  cap- 
tain of  her,  and  his  brother  John  was  first  clerk ;  and 
it  was  his  first  trip  in  her,  too;  Tom  Jones  told  me 
these  things  a  week  afterward  in  New  Orleans;  he 
was  first  mate  of  the  Sunflower.  Captain  Hardy 
stuck  a  nail  in  his  foot  the  6th  of  July  of  the  next 
year,  and  died  of  the  lockjaw  on  the  i5th.  His 
brother  John  died  two  years  after — 3d  of  March — 
erysipelas.  I  never  saw  either  of  the  Hardy s — they 
were  Alleghany  River  men — but  people  who  knew 
them  told  me  all  these  things.  And  they  said  Cap- 
tain Hardy  wore  yarn  socks  winter  and  summer  just 
the  same,  and  his  first  wife's  name  was  Jane  Shook — 
she  was  from  New  England — and  his  second  one 
died  in  a  lunatic  asylum.  It  was  in  the  blood.  She 
was  from  Lexington,  Kentucky.  Name  was  Horton 
before  she  was  married." 

And  so  on,  by  the  hour,  the  man's  tongue  would 
go.  He  could  not  forget  anything.  It  was  simply 
impossible.  The  most  trivial  details  remained  as 
distinct  and  luminous  in  his  head,  after  they  had 
lain  there  for  years,  as  the  most  memorable  events. 
His  was  not  simply  a  pilot's  memory;  its  grasp  was 
universal.  It  he  were  talking  about  a  trifling  letter 
he  had  received  seven  years  before,  he  was  pretty 
sure  to  deliver  you  the  entire  screed  from  memory. 
And  then,  without  observing  that  he  was  departing 
from  the  true  line  of  his  talk,  he  was  more  than  likely 
in 


MARK     TWAIN 

to  hurl  in  a  long-drawn  parenthetical  biography  of 
the  writer  of  that  letter;  and  you  were  lucky  indeed 
if  he  did  not  take  up  that  writer's  relatives,  one  by 
one,  and  give  you  their  biographies,  too. 

Such  a  memory  as  that  is  a  great  misfortune.  To 
it,  all  occurrences  are  of  the  same  size.  Its  possessor 
cannot  distinguish  an  interesting  circumstance  from 
an  uninteresting  one.  As  a  talker,  he  is  bound  to 
clog  his  narrative  with  tiresome  details  and  make 
himself  an  insufferable  bore.  Moreover,  he  cannot 
stick  to  his  subject.  He  picks  up  every  little  grain 
of  memory  he  discerns  in  his  way,  and  so  is  led  aside. 
Mr.  Brown  would  start  out  with  the  honest  intention 
of  telling  you  a  vastly  funny  anecdote  about  a  dog. 
He  would  be  "so  full  of  laugh"  that  he  could  hardly 
begin;  then  his  memory  would  start  with  the  dog's 
breed  and  personal  appearance;  drift  into  a  history 
of  his  owner;  of  his  owner's  family,  with  descriptions 
of  weddings  and  burials  that  had  occurred  in  it, 
together  with  recitals  of  congratulatory  verses  and 
obituary  poetry  provoked  by  the  same;  then  this 
memory  would  recollect  that  one  of  these  events  oc- 
curred during  the  celebrated  "hard  winter"  of  such- 
and-such  a  year,  and  a  minute  description  of  that 
winter  would  follow,  along  with  the  names  of  people 
who  were  frozen  to  death,  and  statistics  showing  the 
high  figures  which  pork  and  hay  went  up  to.  Pork 
and  hay  would  suggest  corn  and  fodder;  corn  and 
fodder  would  suggest  cows  and  horses;  cows  and 
horses  would  suggest  the  circus  and  certain  cele- 
brated bare-back  riders;  the  transition  from  the 
circus  to  the  menagerie  was  easy  and  natural;  from 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

the  elephant  to  equatorial  Africa  was  but  a  step ;  then 
of  course  the  heathen  savages  would  suggest  religion; 
and  at  the  end  of  three  or  four  hours'  tedious  jaw, 
the  watch  would  change,  and  Brown  would  go  out 
of  the  pilot-house  muttering  extracts  from  sermons 
he  had  heard  years  before  about  the  efficacy  of 
prayer  as  a  means  of  grace.  And  the  original  first 
mention  would  be  all  you  had  learned  about  that 
dog,  after  all  this  waiting  and  hungering. 

A  pilot  must  have  a  memory;  but  there  are  two 
higher  qualities  which  he  must  also  have.  He  must 
have  good  and  quick  judgment  and  decision,  and  a 
cool,  calm  courage  that  no  peril  can  shake.  Give 
a  man  the  merest  trifle  of  pluck  to  start  with,  and  by 
the  time  he  has  become  a  pilot  he  cannot  be  un- 
manned by  any  danger  a  steamboat  can  get  into; 
but  one  cannot  quite  say  the  same  for  judgment. 
Judgment  is  a  matter  of  brains,  and  a  man  must 
start  with  a  good  stock  of  that  article  or  he  will  never 
succeed  as  a  pilot. 

The  growth  of  courage  in  the  pilot-house  is  steady 
all  the  time,  but  it  does  not  reach  a  high  and  satis- 
factory condition  until  some  time  after  the  young 
pilot  has  been  "standing  his  own  watch"  alone  and 
under  the  staggering  weight  of  all  the  responsibilities 
connected  with  the  position.  When  the  apprentice 
has  become  pretty  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the 
river,  he  goes  clattering  along  so  fearlessly  with  his 
steamboat,  night  or  day,  that  he  presently  begins  to 
imagine  that  it  is  his  courage  that  animates  him ;  but 
the  first  time  the  pilot  steps  out  and  leaves  him  to  his 
own  devices  he  finds  out  it  was  the  other  man's. 
"3 


MARK     TWAIN 

He  discovers  that  the  article  has  been  left  out  of  his 
own  cargo  altogether.  The  whole  river  is  bristling 
with  exigencies  in  a  moment;  he  is  not  prepared  for 
them;  he  does  not  know  how  to  meet  them;  all  his 
knowledge  forsakes  him;  and  within  fifteen  minutes 
he  is  as  white  as  a  sheet  and  scared  almost  to  death. 
Therefore  pilots  wisely  train  these  cubs  by  various 
strategic  tricks  to  look  danger  in  the  face  a  little 
more  calmly.  A  favorite  way  of  theirs  is  to  play  a 
friendly  swindle  upon  the  candidate. 

Mr.  Bixby  served  me  in  this  fashion  once,  and  for 
years  afterward  I  used  to  blush,  even  in  my  sleep, 
when  I  thought  of  it.  t  I  had  become  a  good  steers- 
man; so  good,  indeed,  that  I  had  all  the  work  to  do 
on  our  watch,  night  and  day.  Mr.  Bixby  seldom 
made  a  suggestion  to  me ;  all  he  ever  did  was  to  take 
the  wheel  on  particularly  bad  nights  or  in  particu- 
larly bad  crossings,  land  the  boat  when  she  needed 
to  be  landed,  play  gentleman  of  leisure  nine-tenths 
of  the  watch,  and  collect  the  wages.  The  lower  river 
was  about  bank-full,  and  if  anybody  had  questioned 
my  ability  to  run  any  crossing  between  Cairo  .and 
New  Orleans  without  help  or  instruction,  I  should 
have  felt  irreparably  hurt.  The  idea  of  being  afraid 
of  any  crossing  in  the  lot,  in  the  daytime,  was  a  thing 
too  preposterous  for  contemplation.  Well,  one 
matchless  summer's  day  I  was  bowling  down  the 
bend  above  Island  66,  brimful  of  self-conceit  and 
carrying  my  nose  as  high  as  a  giraffe's,  when  Mr. 
Bixby  said : 

' '  I  am  going  below  awhile.  I  suppose  you  know 
the  next  crossing?" 

114 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

This  was  almost  an  affront.  It  was  about  the 
plainest  and  simplest  crossing  in  the  whole  river. 
One  couldn't  come  to  any  harm,  whether  he  ran  it 
right  or  not;  and  as  for  depth,  there  never  had  been 
any  bottom  there.  I  knew  all  this,  perfectly  well. 

"Know  how  to  run  it?  Why,  I  can  run  it  with 
my  eyes  shut." 

"How  much  water  is  there  in  it?" 

"Well,  that  is  an  odd  question.  I  couldn't  get 
bottom  there  with  a  church  steeple." 

"You  think  so,  do  you?" 

The  very  tone  of  the  question  shook  my  con- 
fidence. That  was  what  Mr.  Bixby  was  expecting. 
He  left,  without  saying  anything  more.  I  began  to 
imagine  all  sorts  of  things.  Mr.  Bixby,  unknown  to 
me,  of  course,  sent  somebody  down  to  the  forecastle 
with  some  mysterious  instructions  to  the  leadsmen, 
another  messenger  was  sent  to  whisper  among  the 
officers,  and  then  Mr.  Bixby  went  into  hiding  behind 
a  smoke-stack  where  he  could  observe  results.  Pres- 
ently the  captain  stepped  out  on  the  hurricane-deck; 
next  the  chief  mate  appeared;  then  a  clerk.  Every 
moment  or  two  a  straggler  was  added  to  my  audience ; 
and  before  I  got  to  the  head  of  the  island  I  had 
fifteen  or  twenty  people  assembled  down  there  under 
my  nose.  I  began  to  wonder  what  the  trouble  was. 
As  I  started  across,  the  captain  glanced  aloft  at  me 
and  said,  with  a  sham  uneasiness  in  his  voice: 

"Where  is  Mr.  Bixby?" 

"Gone  below,  sir." 

But  that  did  the  business  for  me.  My  imagina- 
tion began  to  construct  dangers  out  of  nothing,  and 


MARK    TWAIN 

they  multiplied  faster  than  I  could  keep  the  run  of 
them.  All  at  once  I  imagined  I  saw  shoal  water 
ahead!  The  wave  of  coward  agony  that  surged 
through  me  then  came  near  dislocating  every  joint 
in  me.  All  my  confidence  in  that  crossing  vanished. 
I  seized  the  bell-rope;  dropped  it,  ashamed;  seized 
it  again;  dropped  it  once  more;  clutched  it  trem- 
blingly once  again,  and  pulled  it  so  feebly  that  I 
could  hardly  hear  the  stroke  myself.  Captain  and 
mate  sang  out  instantly,  and  both  together: 

"Starboard  lead  there!  and  quick  about  it!" 

This  was  another  shock.  I  began  to  climb  the 
wheel  like  a  squirrel;  but  I  would  hardly  get  the 
boat  started  to  port  before  I  would  see  new  dangers 
on  that  side,  and  away  I  would  spin  to  the  other; 
only  to  find  perils  accumulating  to  starboard,  and 
be  crazy  to  get  to  port  again.  Then  came  the  leads- 
man's sepulchral  cry : 

"D-e-e-pfour!" 

Deep  four  in  a  bottomless  crossing !  The  terror  of 
it  took  my  breath  away. 

"M-a-r-k  three!  M-a-r-k  three!  Quarter-less- 
three!  Half  twain!" 

This  was  frightful!  I  seized  the  bell-ropes  and 
stopped  the  engines. 

"Quarter  twain!    Quarter  twain!    Mark  twain!" 

I  was  helpless.  I  did  not  know  what  in  the  world 
to  do.  I  was  quaking  from  head  to  foot,  and  I  could 
have  hung  my  hat  on  my  eyes,  they  stuck  out  so  far. 

' '  Quarter-fcss-twain !     Nine-and-a-foz///" 

We  were  drawing  nine!  My  hands  were  in  a 
nerveless  flutter.  I  could  not  ring  a  bell  intelligibly 
116 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

with  them.    I  flew  to  the  speaking-tube  and  shouted 
to  the  engineer: 

"Oh,  Ben,  if  you  love  me,  back  her!  Quick,  Ben! 
Oh,  back  the  immortal  soul  out  of  her!" 

I  heard  the  door  close  gently.  I  looked  around, 
and  there  stood  Mr.  Bixby,  smiling  a  bland,  sweet 
smile.  Then  the  audience  on  the  hurricane -deck 
sent  up  a  thundergust  of  humiliating  laughter.  I 
saw  it  all,  now,  and  I  felt  meaner  than  the  meanest 
man  in  human  history.  I  laid  in  the  lead,  set  the 
boat  in  her  marks,  came  ahead  on  the  engines,  and 
said: 

"It  was  a  fine  trick  to  play  on  an  orphan,  wasn't 
it?  It  suppose  I'll  never  hear  the  last  of  how  I  was 
ass  enough  to  heave  the  lead  at  the  head  of,  66." 

' '  Well,  no,  you  won't,  maybe.  In  fact  I  hope  you 
won't;  for  I  want  you  to  learn  something  by  that 
experience.  Didn't  you  know  there  was  no  bottom 
in  that  crossing?" 

"Yes,  sir,  I  did." 

"Very  well,  then.     You  shouldn't  have  allowed  ^ 
me  or  anybody  else  to  shake  your  confidence  in  that 
knowledge.     Try  to  remember  that.     And  another 
thing:  when  you  get  into  a  dangerous  place,  don't 
turn  coward.     That  isn't  going  to  help  matters  any." 

It  was  a  good  enough  lesson,  but  pretty  hardly 
learned.  Yet  about  the  hardest  part  of  it  was  that 
for  months  I  so  often  had  to  hear  a  phrase  which  I 
had  conceived  a  particular  distaste  for.  It  was, 
"Oh,  Ben,  if  you  love  me,  back  her!" 


CHAPTER  XIV 

RANK  AND   DIGNITY    OF   PILOTING 

IN  my  preceding  chapters  I  have  tried,  by  going 
into  the  minutiae  of  the  science  of  piloting,  to 
carry  the  reader  step  by  step  to  a  comprehension  of 
what  the  science  consists  of;  and  at  the  same  time 
I  have  tried  to  show  him  that  it  is  a  very  curious 
and  wonderful  science,  too,  and  very  worthy  of  his 
attention.  If  I  have  seemed  to  love  my  subject,  it 
is  no  surprising  thing,  for  I  loved  the  profession  far 
better  than  any  I  have  followed  since,  and  I  took  a 
measureless  pride  in  it.  The  reason  is  plain:  a  pilot, 
in  those  days,  was  the  only  unfettered  and  entirely 
independent  human  being  that  lived  in  the  earth. 
Kings  are  but  the  hampered  servants  of  parliament 
and  the  people;  parliaments  sit  in  chains  forged  by 
their  constituency;  the  editor  of  a  newspaper  can- 
not be  independent,  but  must  work  with  one  hand 
tied  behind  him  by  party  and  patrons,  and  be  con- 
tent to  utter  only  half  or  two- thirds  of  his  mind; 
no  clergyman  is  a  free  man  and  may  speak  the  whole 
truth,  regardless  of  his  parish's  opinions;  writers  of 
all  kinds  are  manacled  servants  of  the  public.  We 
write  frankly  and  fearlessly,  but  then  we  "modify" 
before  we  print.  In  truth,  every  man  and  woman 
and  child  has  a  master,  and  worries  and  frets  in 
118 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

servitude ;  but,  in  the  day  I  write  of,  the  Mississippi 
pilot  had  none.  The  captain  could  stand  upon  the 
hurricane-deck,  in  the  pomp  of  a  very  brief  authority, 
and  give  him  five  or  six  orders  while  the  vessel 
backed  into  the  stream,  and  then  that  skipper's 
reign  was  over.  The  moment  that  the  boat  was 
under  way  in  the  river,  she  was  under  the  sole  and 
unquestioned  control  of  the  pilot.  He  could  do  with 
her  exactly  as  he  pleased,  run  her  when  and  whither 
he  chose,  and  tie  her  up  to  the  bank  whenever  his 
judgment  said  that  that  course  was  best.  His  move- 
ments were  entirely  free;  he  consulted  no  one,  he 
received  commands  from  nobody,  he  promptly  re- 
sented even  the  merest  suggestions.  Indeed,  the  law 
of  the  United  States  forbade  him  to  listen  to  com- 
mands or  suggestions,  rightly  considering  that  the 
pilot  necessarily  knew  better  how  to  handle  the  boat 
than  anybody  could  tell  him.  So  here  was  the 
novelty  of  a  king  without  a  keeper,  an  absolute  mon- 
arch who  was  absolute  in  sober  truth  and  not  by  a 
fiction  of  words.  I  have  seen  a  boy  of  eighteen 
taking  a  great  steamer  serenely  into  what  seemed 
almost  certain  destruction,  and  the  aged  captain 
standing  mutely  by,  filled  with  apprehension  but 
powerless  to  interfere.  His  interference,  in  that 
particular  instance,  might  have  been  an  excellent 
thing,  but  to  permit  it  would  have  been  to  establish 
a  most  pernicious  precedent.  It  will  easily  be 
guessed,  considering  the  pilot's  boundless  authority, 
that  he  was  a  great  personage  in  the  old  steamboat- 
ing  days.  He  was  treated  with  marked  courtesy  by 
the  captain  and  with  marked  deference  by  all  the 
119 


MARK    TWAIN 

officers  and  servants;  and  this  deferential  spirit  was 
quickly  communicated  to  the  passengers,  too.  I 
think  pilots  were  about  the  only  people  I  ever  knew 
who  failed  to  show,  in  some  degree,  embarrassment 
in  the  presence  of  traveling  foreign  princes.  But 
then,  people  in  one's  own  grade  of  life  are  not  usually 
embarrassing  objects. 

By  long  habit,  pilots  came  to  put  all  their  wishes 
in  the  form  of  commands.  It  "gravels"  me,  to  this 
day,  to  put  my  will  in  the  weak  shape  of  a  request, 
instead  of  launching  it  in  the  crisp  language  of  an 
order. 

In  those  old  days,  to  load  a  steamboat  at  St.  Louis, 
take  her  to  New  Orleans  and  back,  and  discharge 
cargo,  consumed  about  twenty-five  days,  on  an 
average.  Seven  or  eight  of  these  days  the  boat 
spent  at  the  wharves  of  St.  Louis  and  New  Orleans, 
and  every  soul  on  board  was  hard  at  work,  except 
the  two  pilots;  they  did  nothing  but  play  gentleman 
up-town,  and  receive  the  same  wages  for  it  as  if  they 
had  been  on  duty.  The  moment  the  boat  touched 
the  wharf  at  either  city  they  were  ashore;  and  they 
were  not  likely  to  be  seen  again  till  the  last  bell  was 
ringing  and  every  thing  in  readiness  for  another  voyage. 

When  a  captain  got  hold  of  a  pilot  of  particularly 
high  reputation,  he  took  pains  to  keep  him.  When 
wages  were  four  hundred  dollars  a  month  on  the 
Upper  Mississippi,  I  have  known  a  captain  to  keep 
such  a  pilot  in  idleness,  under  full  pay,  three  months 
at  a  time,  while  the  river  was  frozen  up.  And  one 
must  remember  that  in  those  cheap  times  four  hun- 
dred dollars  was  a  salary  of  almost  inconceivable 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

splendor.  Few  men  on  shore  got  such  pay  as  that, 
and  when  they  did  they  were  mightily  looked  up  to. 
When  pilots  from  either  end  of  the  river  wandered 
into  our  small  Missouri  village,  they  were  sought  by 
the  best  and  the  fairest,  and  treated  with  exalted 
respect.  Lying  in  port  under  wages  was  a  thing 
which  many  pilots  greatly  enjoyed  and  appreciated; 
especially  if  they  belonged  in  the  Missouri  River  in 
the  heyday  of  that  trade  (Kansas  times),  and  got 
nine  hundred  dollars  a  trip,  which  was  equivalent  to 
about  eighteen  hundred  dollars  a  month.  Here  is  a 
conversation  of  that  day.  A  chap  out  of  the  Illinois 
River,  with  a  little  stern-wheel  tub,  accosts  a  couple 
of  ornate  and  gilded  Missouri  River  pilots: 

"Gentlemen,  I've  got  a  pretty  good  trip  for  the 
up-country,  and  shall  want  you  about  a  month. 
How  much  will  it  be?" 

"Eighteen  hundred  dollars  apiece." 

"Heavens  and  earth!  You  take  my  boat,  let  me 
have  your  wages,  and  I'll  divide!" 

I  will  remark,  in  passing,  that  Mississippi  steam- 
boatmen  were  important  in  landsmen's  eyes  (and  in 
their  own,  too,  in  a  degree)  according  to  the  dignity 
of  the  boat  they  were  on.  For  instance,  it  was  a 
proud  thing  to  be  of  the  crew  of  such  stately  craft 
as  the  Aleck  Scott  or  the  Grand  Turk.  Negro  firemen, 
deck-hands,  and  barbers  belonging  to  those  boats 
were  distinguished  personages  in  their  grade  of  life, 
and  they  were  well  aware  of  that  fact,  too.  A  stal- 
wart darky  once  gave  offense  at  a  negro  ball  in  New 
Orleans  by  putting  on  a  good  many  airs.  Finally 
one  of  the  managers  bustled  up  to  him  and  said : 


MARK    TWAIN 

"Who  is  you,  anyway?  Who  is  you?  dat's  what 
I  wants  to  know!" 

The  offender  was  not  disconcerted  in  the  least, 
but  swelled  himself  up  and  threw  that  into  his  voice 
which  showed  that  he  knew  he  was  not  putting  on  all 
those  airs  on  a  stinted  capital. 

"Who  is  I?  Who  is  I?  I  let  you  know  mighty 
quick  who  I  is!  I  want  you  niggers  to  understan* 
dat  I  fires  de  middle  do'1  on  de  Aleck  Scott!1' 

That  was  sufficient. 

The  barber  of  the  Grand  Turk  was  a  spruce  young 
negro,  who  aired  his  importance  with  balmy  com- 
placency, and  was  greatly  courted  by  the  circle  in 
which  he  moved.  The  young  colored  population  of 
New  Orleans  were  much  given  to  flirting,  at  twilight, 
on  the  banquettes  of  the  back  streets.  Somebody 
saw  and  heard  something  like  the  following,  one 
evening,  in  one  of  those  localities.  A  middle-aged 
negro  woman  projected  her  head  through  a  broken 
pane  and  shouted  (very  willing  that  the  neighbors 
should  hear  and  envy),  "You  Mary  Ann,  come  in  de 
house  dis  minute !  Stannin'  out  dah  f oolin'  'long  wid 
dat  low  trash,  an*  heah's  de  barber  off'n  de  Gran1 
Turk  wants  to  conwerse  wid  you!" 

My  reference,  a  moment  ago,  to  the  fact  that  a 
pilot's  peculiar  official  position  placed  him  out  of  the 
reach  of  criticism  or  command,  brings  Stephen  W. 
naturally  to  my  mind.  He  was  a  gifted  pilot,  a  good 
fellow,  a  tireless  talker,  and  had  both  wit  and  humor 
in  him.  He  had  a  most  irreverent  independence, 
too,  and  was  deliriously  easy-going  and  comfortable 

1  Door. 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

in  the  presence  of  age,  official  dignity,  and  even  the 
most  august  wealth.  He  always  had  work,  he  never 
saved  a  penny,  he  was  a  most  persuasive  borrower, 
he  was  in  debt  to  every  pilot  on  the  river,  and  to 
the  majority  of  the  captains.  He  could  throw  a  sort 
of  splendor  around  a  bit  of  harum-scarum,  devil- 
may-care  piloting,  that  made  it  almost  fascinating — 
but  not  to  everybody.  He  made  a  trip  with  good 
old  Captain  Y.  once,  and  was  "relieved"  from  duty 
when  the  boat  got  to  New  Orleans.  Somebody  ex- 
pressed surprise  at  the  discharge.  Captain  Y.  shud- 
dered at  the  mere  mention  of  Stephen.  Then  his 
poor,  thin  old  voice  piped  out  something  like  this: 
"Why,  bless  me!  I  wouldn't  have  such  a  wild 
creature  on  my  boat  for  the  world — not  for  the 
whole  world!  He  swears,  he  sings,  he  whistles,  he 
yells — I  never  saw  such  an  Injun  to  yell.  All  times 
of  the  night — it  never  made  any  difference  to  him. 
He  would  just  yell  that  way,  not  for  anything  in 
particular,  but  merely  on  account  of  a  kind  of  devilish 
comfort  he  got  out  of  it.  I  never  could  get  into  a 
sound  sleep  but  he  would  fetch  me  out  of  bed,  all  in 
a  cold  sweat,  with  one  of  those  dreadful  war-whoops. 
A  queer  being — very  queer  being;  no  respect  for 
anything  or  anybody.  Sometimes  he  called  me 
'Johnny.'  And  he  kept  a  fiddle  and  a  cat.  He 
played  execrably.  This  seemed  to  distress  the  cat, 
and  so  the  cat  would  howl.  Nobody  could  sleep 
where  that  man — and  his  family — was.  And  reck- 
less? There  never  was  anything  like  it.  Now  you 
may  believe  it  or  not,  but  as  sure  as  I  am  sitting 
here,  he  brought  my  boat  a-tilting  down  through 
123 


MARK     TWAIN 

those  awful  snags  at  Chicot  under  a  rattling  head  of 
steam,  and  the  wind  a-blowing  like  the  very  nation, 
at  that !  My  officers  will  tell  you  so.  They  saw  it. 
And,  sir,  while  he  was  a-tearing  right  down  through 
those  snags,  and  I  a-shaking  in  my  shoes  and  pray- 
ing, I  wish  I  may  never  speak  again  if  he  didn't 
pucker  up  his  mouth  and  go  to  whistling!  Yes,  sir; 
whistling  'Buffalo  gals,  can't  you  come  out  to-night, 
can't  you  come  out  to-night,  can't  you  come  out  to- 
night ' ;  and  doing  it  as  calmly  as  if  we  were  attending 
a  funeral  and  weren't  related  to  the  corpse.  And 
when  I  remonstrated  with  him  about  it,  he  smiled 
down  on  me  as  if  I  was  his  child,  and  told  me  to  run 
in  the  house  and  try  to  be  good,  and  not  be  meddling 
with  my  superiors!"1 

Once  a  pretty  mean  captain  caught  Stephen  in 
New  Orleans  out  of  work  and  as  usual  out  of  money. 
He  laid  steady  siege  to  Stephen,  who  was  in  a  very 
"close  place,"  and  finally  persuaded  him  to  hire  with 
him  at  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  dollars  per 
month,  just  half  wages,  the  captain  agreeing  not  to 
divulge  the  secret  and  so  bring  down  the  contempt 
of  all  the  guild  upon  the  poor  fellow.  But  the  boat 
was  not  more  than  a  day  out  of  New  Orleans  before 
Stephen  discovered  that  the  captain  was  boasting  of 
his  exploit,  and  that  all  the  officers  had  been  told. 
Stephen  winced,  but  said  nothing.  About  the  mid- 
dle of  the  afternoon  the  captain  stepped  out  on  the 
hurricane-deck,  cast  his  eye  around,  and  looked  a 

1  Considering  a  captain's  ostentatious  but  hollow  chieftainship,  and 
a  pilot's  real  authority,  there  was  something  impudently  apt  and 
happy  about  that  way  of  phrasing  it. 
124 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

good  deal  surprised.  He  glanced  inquiringly  aloft 
at  Stephen,  but  Stephen  was  whistling  placidly  and 
attending  to  business.  The  captain  stood  around 
awhile  in  evident  discomfort,  and  once  or  twice 
seemed  about  to  make  a  suggestion;  but  the  eti- 
quette of  the  river  taught  him  to  avoid  that  sort 
of  rashness,  and  so  he  managed  to  hold  his  peace. 
He  chafed  and  puzzled  a  few  minutes  longer,  then 
retired  to  his  apartments.  But  soon  he  was  out 
again,  and  apparently  more  perplexed  than  ever. 
Presently  he  ventured  to  remark,  with  deference: 

"Pretty  good  stage  of  the  river  now,  ain't  it,  sir?" 

"Well,  I  should  say  so!  Bank-full  is  a  pretty 
liberal  stage." 

"Seems  to  be  a  good  deal  of  current  here." 

"Good  deal  don't  describe  it!  It's  worse  than  a 
mill-race." 

"Isn't  it  easier  in  toward  shore  than  it  is  out  here 
in  the  middle?" 

' '  Yes,  I  reckon  it  is ;  but  a  body  can't  be  too  care- 
ful with  a  steamboat.  It's  pretty  safe  out  here ;  can't 
strike  any  bottom  here,  you  can  depend  on  that." 

The  captain  departed,  looking  rueful  enough.  At 
this  rate,  he  would  probably  die  of  old  age  before 
his  boat  got  to  St.  Louis.  Next  day  he  appeared  on 
deck  and  again  found  Stephen  faithfully  standing  up 
the  middle  of  the  river,  fighting  the  whole  vast  force 
of  the  Mississippi,  and  whistling  the  same  placid 
tune.  This  thing  was  becoming  serious.  In  by  the 
shore  was  a  slower  boat  clipping  along  in  the  easy 
water  and  gaining  steadily;  she  began  to  make  for 
an  island  chute;  Stephen  stuck  to  the  middle  of 
125 


MARK    TWAIN 

the  river.  Speech  was  wrung  from  the  captain.  He 
said : 

"Mr.  W.,  don't  that  chute  cut  off  a  good  deal  of 
distance?" 

"I  think  it  does,  but  I  don't  know." 

"Don't  know!  Well,  isn't  there  water  enough  in 
it  now  to  go  through?" 

"I  expect  there  is,  but  I  am  not  certain." 

"Upon  my  word  this  is  odd!  Why,  those  pilots 
on  that  boat  yonder  are  going  to  try  it.  Do  you 
mean  to  say  that  you  don't  know  as  much  as  they 
do?" 

"They!  Why,  they  are  two -hundred -and -fifty- 
dollar  pilots!  But  don't  you  be  uneasy;  I  know  as 
much  as  any  man  can  afford  to  know  for  a  hundred 
and  twenty-five ! ' ' 

The  captain  surrendered. 

Five  minutes  later  Stephen  was  bowling  through 
the  chute  and  showing  the  rival  boat  a  two-hundred- 
and-fifty-dollar  pair  of  heels. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE   PILOTS'    MONOPOLY 

ONE  day,  on  board  the  Aleck  Scott,  my  chief,  Mr. 
Bixby,  was  crawling  carefully  through  a  close 
place  at  Cat  Island,  both  leads  going,  and  everybody 
holding  his  breath.  The  captain,  a  nervous,  appre- 
hensive man,  kept  still  as  long  as  he  could,  but  finally 
broke  down  and  shouted  from  the  hurricane-deck : 

"For  gracious'  sake,  give  her  steam,  Mr.  Bixby! 
give  her  steam!  She'll  never  raise  the  reef  on  this 
headway!" 

For  all  the  effect  that  was  produced  upon  Mr. 
Bixby,  one  would  have  supposed  that  no  remark  had 
been  made.  But  five  minutes  later,  when  the  danger 
was  past  and  the  leads  laid  in,  he  burst  instantly  into 
a  consuming  fury,  and  gave  the  captain  the  most 
admirable  cursing  I  ever  listened  to.  No  bloodshed 
ensued,  but  that  was  because  the  captain's  cause  was 
weak,  for  ordinarily  he  was  not  a  man  to  take  cor- 
rection quietly. 

Having  now  set  forth  in  detail  the  nature  of  the 
science  of  piloting,  and  likewise  described  the  rank 
which  the  pilot  held  among  the  fraternity  of  steam- 
boatmen,  this  seems  a  fitting  place  to  say  a  few 
words  about  an  organization  which  the  pilots  once 
formed  for  the  protection  of  their  guild.  It  was 
127 


MARK     TWAIN 

curious  and  noteworthy  in  this,  that  it  was  perhaps 
the  compactest,  the  completest,  and  the  strongest 
commercial  organization  ever  formed  among  men. 

For  a  long  time  wages  had  been  two  hundred  and 
fifty  dollars  a  month ;  but  curiously  enough,  as  steam- 
boats multiplied  and  business  increased,  the  wages 
began  to  fall  little  by  little.  It  was  easy  to  discover 
the  reason  of  this.  Too  many  pilots  were  being 
"made."  It  was  nice  to  have  a  "cub,"  a  steersman, 
to  do  all  the  hard  work  for  a  couple  of  years,  gratis, 
while  his  master  sat  on  a  high  bench  and  smoked; 
all  pilots  and  captains  had  sons  or  nephews  who 
wanted  to  be  pilots.  By  and  by  it  came  to  pass  that 
nearly  every  pilot  on  the  river  had  a  steersman. 
When  a  steersman  had  made  an  amount  of  progress 
that  was  satisfactory  to  any  two  pilots  in  the  trade, 
they  could  get  a  pilot's  license  for  him  by  signing  an 
application  directed  to  the  United  States  Inspector. 
Nothing  further  was  needed;  usually  no  questions 
were  asked,  no  proofs  of  capacity  required. 

Very  well,  this  growing  swarm  of  new  pilots  pres- 
ently began  to  undermine  the  wages  in  order  to  get 
berths.  Too  late — apparently — the  knights  of  the 
tiller  perceived  their  mistake.  Plainly,  something 
had  to  be  done,  and  quickly,  but  what  was  to  be 
the  needful  thing?  A  close  organization.  Nothing 
else  would  answer.  To  compass  this  seemed  an  im- 
possibility; so  it  was  talked  and  talked  and  then 
dropped.  It  was  too  likely  to  ruin  whoever  ven- 
tured to  move  in  the  matter.  But  at  last  about  a 
dozen  of  the  boldest — and  some  of  them  the  best — 
pilots  on  the  river  launched  themselves  into  the 
128 


LIFE    ON    THE    MISSISSIPPI 

enterprise  and  took  all  the  chances  >  They  got  a 
special  charter  from  the  legislature,  with  large  pow- 
ers, under  the  name  of  the  Pilots'  Benevolent  Asso- 
ciation ;  elected  their  officers,  completed  their  organi- 
zation, contributed  capital,  put  "assocation"  wages 
up  to  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  at  once — and 
then  retired  to  their  homes,  for  they  were  promptly 
discharged  from  employment.  But  there  were  two 
or  three  unnoticed  trifles  in  their  by-laws  which  had 
the  seeds  of  propagation  in  them.  For  instance,  all 
idle  members  of  the  association,  in  good  standing, 
were  entitled  to  a  pension  of  twenty-five  dollars  per 
month.  This  began  to  bring  in  one  straggler  after 
another  from  the  ranks  of  the  new-fledged  pilots, 
in  the  dull  (summer)  season.  Better  have  twenty- 
five  dollars  than  starve;  the  initiation  fee  was  only 
twelve  dollars,  and  no  dues  required  from  the  un- 
employed. 

Also,  the  widows  of  deceased  members  in  good 
standing  could  draw  twenty-five  dollars  per  month, 
and  a  certain  sum  for  each  of  their  children.  Also, 
the  said  deceased  would  be  buried  at  the  association's 
expense.  These  things  resurrected  all  the  superan- 
nuated and  forgotten  pilots  in  the  Mississippi  Valley. 
They  came  from  farms,  they  came  from  interior 
villages,  they  came  from  everywhere.  They  came  on 
crutches,  on  drays,  in  ambulances — any  way,  so  they 
got  there.  They  paid  in  their  twelve  dollars,  and 
straightway  began  to  draw  out  twenty-five  dollars  a 
month  and  calculate  their  burial  bills. 

By  and  by  all  the  useless,  helpless  pilots,  and  a 
dozen  first-class  ones,  were  in  the  association,  and 
129 


MARK    TWAIN 

nine-tenths  of  the  best  pilots  out  of  it  and  laughing 
at  it.  It  was  the  laughing-stock  of  the  whole  river. 
Everybody  joked  about  the  by-law  requiring  mem- 
bers to  pay  ten  f>gr  cent,  of  their  wages,  every  month, 
into  the  treasury  for  the  support  of  the  association, 
whereas  all  the  members  were  outcast  and  tabooed, 
and  no  one  would  employ  them.  Everybody  was 
derisively  grateful  to  the  association  for  taking  all  the 
worthless  pilots  out  of  the  way  and  leaving  the 
whole  field  to  the  excellent  and  the  deserving;  and 
everybody  was  not  only  jocularly  grateful  for  that, 
but  for  a  result  which  naturally  followed,  namely,  the 
gradual  advance  of  wages  as  the  busy  season  ap- 
proached. Wages  had  gone  up  from  the  low  figure 
of  one  hundred  dollars  a  month  to  one  hundred  and 
twenty-five,  and  in  some  cases  to  one  hundred  and 
fifty;  and  it  was  great  fun  to  enlarge  upon  the  fact 
that  this  charming  thing  had  been  accomplished  by 
a  body  of  men  not  one  of  whom  received  a  particle 
of  benefit  from  it.  Some  of  the  jokers  used  to  call 
at  the  association-rooms  and  have  a  good  time  chaf- 
fing the  members  and  offering  them  the  charity  of 
taking  them  as  steersmen  for  a  trip,  so  that  they 
could  see  what  the  forgotten  river  looked  like. 
However,  the  association  was  content;  or  at  least 
gave  no  sign  to  the  contrary.  Now  and  then  it 
captured  a  pilot  who  was  "out  of  luck,"  and  added 
him  to  its  list;  and  these  later  additions  were  very 
valuable,  for  they  were  good  pilots ;  the  incompetent 
ones  had  all  been  absorbed  before.  As  business 
freshened,  wages  climbed  gradually  up  to  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  dollars — the  association  figure — and 
130 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

became  firmly  fixed  there;  and  still  without  bene- 
fiting a  member  of  that  body,  for  no  member  was 
hired.  The  hilarity  at  the  association's  expense 
burst  all  bounds,  now.  There  was  no  end  to  the 
fun  which  that  poor  martyr  had  to  put  up  with. 

However,  it  is  a  long  lane  that  has  no  turning. 
Winter  approached,  business  doubled  and  trebled, 
and  an  avalanche  of  Missouri,  Illinois,  and  Upper 
Mississippi  boats  came  pouring  down  to  take  a  chance 
in  the  New  Orleans  trade.  All  of  a  sudden  pilots 
were  in  great  demand,  and  were  correspondingly 
scarce.  The  time  for  revenge  was  come.  It  was  a 
bitter  pill  to  have  to  accept  association  pilots  at  last, 
yet  captains  and  owners  agreed  that  there  was  no 
other  way.  But  none  of  these  outcasts  offered !  So 
there  was  a  still  bitterer  pill  to  be  swallowed:  they 
must  be  sought  out  and  asked  for  their  services. 
Captain was  the  first  man  who  found  it  neces- 
sary to  take  the  dose,  and  he  had  been  the  loudest 
derider  of  the  organization.  He  hunted  up  one  of  the 
best  of  the  association  pilots  and  said : 

"Well,  you  boys  have  rather  got  the  best  of  us  for 
a  little  while,  so  I'll  give  in  with  as  good  a  grace  as 
I  can.  I've  come  to  hire  you;  get  your  trunk  aboard 
right  away.  I  want  to  leave  at  twelve  o'clock." 

"I  don't  know  about  that.  Who  is  your  other 
pilot?" 

"I've  got  I.  S.     Why?" 

"I  can't  go  with  him.  He  don't  belong  to  the 
association." 

"What?" 

"It's  so." 


MARK     TWAIN 

"Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  you  won't  turn  a 
wheel  with  one  of  the  very  best  and  oldest  pilots  on 
the  river  because  he  don't  belong  to  your  associa- 
tion?" 

"Yes,  I  do.'* 

"Well,  if  this  isn't  putting  on  airs!  I  supposed  I 
was  doing  you  a  benevolence;  but  I  begin  to  think 
that  I  am  the  party  that  wants  a  favor  done.  Are 
you  acting  under  a  law  of  the  concern?" 

"Yes." 

"Show  it  tome." 

So  they  stepped  into  the  association-rooms,  and 
the  secretary  soon  satisfied  the  captain,  who  said: 

"Well,  what  am  I  to  do?  I  have  hired  Mr.  S.  for 
the  entire  season." 

"I  will  provide  for  you,"  said  the  secretary.  "I 
will  detail  a  pilot  to  go  with  you,  and  he  shall  be  on 
board  at  twelve  o'clock." 

"But  if  I  discharge  S.,  he  will  come  on  me  for  the 
whole  season's  wages." 

"Of  course  that  is  a  matter  between  you  and  Mr. 
S.,  captain.  We  cannot  meddle  in  your  private 
affairs." 

The  captain  stormed,  but  to  no  purpose.  In  the 
end  he  had  to  discharge  S.,  pay  him  about  a  thousand 
dollars,  and  take  an  association  pilot  in  his  place. 
The  laugh  was  beginning  to  turn  the  other  way,  now. 
Every  day,  thenceforward,  a  new  victim  fell;  every 
day  some  outraged  captain  discharged  a  non-asso- 
ciation pet,  with  tears  and  profanity,  and  installed  a 
hated  association  man  in  his  berth.  In  a  very  little 
while  idle  non-associationists  began  to  be  pretty 
132 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

plenty,  brisk  as  business  was,  and  much  as  their 
services  were  desired.  The  laugh  was  shifting  to  the 
other  side  of  their  mouths  most  palpably.  These 
victims,  together  with  the  captains  and  owners, 
presently  ceased  to  laugh  altogether,  and  began  to 
rage  about  the  revenge  they  would  take  when  the 
passing  business  "spurt"  was  over. 

Soon  all  the  laughers  that  were  left  were  the 
owners  and  crews  of  boats  that  had  two  non-associa- 
tion pilots.  But  their  triumph  was  not  very  long- 
lived.  For  this  reason:  It  was  a  rigid  rule  of  the 
association  that  its  members  should  never,  under  any 
circumstances  whatever,  give  information  about  the 
channel  to  any  "outsider."  By  this  time  about  half 
the  boats  had  none  but  association  pilots,  and  the 
other  half  had  none  but  outsiders.  At  the  first 
glance  one  would  suppose  that  when  it  came  to  for- 
bidding information  about  the  river  these  two  parties 
could  play  equally  at  that  game ;  but  this  was  not  so. 
At  every  good-sized  town  from  one  end  of  the  river 
to  the  other,  there  was  a  "wharf -boat"  to  land  at, 
instead  of  a  wharf  or  a  pier.  Freight  was  stored  in 
it  for  transportation;  waiting  passengers  slept  in  its 
cabins.  Upon  each  of  these  wharf-boats  the  asso- 
ciation's officers  placed  a  strong  box,  fastened  with  a 
peculiar  lock  which  was  used  in  no  other  service  but 
one — the  United  States  mail  service.  It  was  the 
letter-bag  lock,  a  sacred  governmental  thing.  By 
dint  of  much  beseeching  the  government  had  been 
persuaded  to  allow  the  association  to  use  this  lock. 
Every  association  man  carried  a  key  which  would 
open  these  boxes.  That  key,  or  rather  a  peculiar 


MARK    TWAIN 

way  of  holding  it  in  the  hand  when  its  owner  was 
asked  for  river  information  by  a  stranger — for  the 
success  of  the  St.  Louis  and  New  Orleans  association 
had  now  bred  tolerably  thriving  branches  in  a  dozen 
neighboring  steamboat  trades — was  the  association 
man's  sign  and  diploma  of  membership;  and  if  the 
stranger  did  not  respond  by  producing  a  similar  key, 
and  holding  it  in  a  certain  manner  duly  prescribed, 
his  question  was  politely  ignored. 

From  the  association's  secretary  each  member 
received  a  package  of  more  or  less  gorgeous  blanks, 
printed  like  a  billhead,  on  handsome  paper,  properly 
ruled  in  columns;  a  billhead  worded  something  like 
this: 

STEAMER  GREAT  REPUBLIC. 

JOHN  SMITH,  MASTER. 
Pilots,  John  Jones  and  Thomas  Brown. 


CROSSINGS. 

SOUNDINGS. 

MARKS. 

REMARKS. 

These  blanks  were  filled  up,  day  by  day,  as  the 
voyage  progressed,  and  deposited  in  the  several 
wharf -boat  boxes.  For  instance,  as  soon  as  the  first 
crossing  out  from  St.  Louis  was  completed,  the  items 
would  be  entered  upon  the  blank,  under  the  appro- 
priate headings,  thus : 

"St.  Louis.  Nine  and  a  half  (feet).  Stern  on 
courthouse,  head  on  dead  cottonwood  above  wood- 
yard,  until  you  raise  the  first  reef,  then  pull  up 
square."  Then  under  head  of  remarks:  "Go  just 
outside  the  wrecks ;  this  is  important.  New  snag  just 
where  you  straighten  down;  go  above  it." 


LIFE     ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

The  pilot  who  deposited  that  blank  in  the  Cairo 
box  (after  adding  to  it  the  details  of  every  crossing 
all  the  way  down  from  St.  Louis)  took  out  and  read 
half  a  dozen  fresh  reports  (from  upward-bound 
steamers)  concerning  the  river  between  Cairo  and 
Memphis,  posted  himself  thoroughly,  returned  them 
to  the  box,  and  went  back  aboard  his  boat  again  so 
armed  against  accident  that  he  could  not  possibly 
get  his  boat  into  trouble  without  bringing  the  most 
ingenious  carelessness  to  his  aid. 

Imagine  the  benefits  of  so  admirable  a  system  in 
a  piece  of  river  twelve  or  thirteen  hundred  miles 
long,  whose  channel  was  shifting  every  day!  The 
pilot  who  had  formerly  been  obliged  to  put  up  with 
seeing  a  shoal  place  once  or  possibly  twice  a  month, 
had  a  hundred  sharp  eyes  to  watch  it  for  him  now, 
and  bushels  of  intelligent  brains  to  tell  him  how  to 
run  it.  His  information  about  it  was  seldom  twenty- 
four  hours  old.  If  the  reports  in  the  last  box  chanced 
to  leave  any  misgivings  on  his  mind  concerning  a 
treacherous  crossing,  he  had  his  remedy ;  he  blew  his 
steam-whistle  in  a  peculiar  way  as  soon  as  he  saw  a 
boat  approaching;  the  signal  was  answered  in  a 
peculiar  way  if  that  boat's  pilots  were  association 
men ;  and  then  the  two  steamers  ranged  alongside  and 
all  uncertainties  were  swept  away  by  fresh  infor- 
mation furnished  to  the  inquirer  by  word  of  mouth 
and  in  minute  detail. 

The  first  thing  a  pilot  did  when  he  reached  New 
Orleans  or  St.  Louis  was  to  take  his  final  and  elabo- 
rate report  to  the  association  parlors  and  hang  it 
up  there — after  which  he  was  free  to  visit  his  family. 


MARK     TWAIN 

In  these  parlors  a  crowd  was  always  gathered  to- 
gether, discussing  changes  in  the  channel,  and  the 
moment  there  was  a  fresh  arrival  everybody  stopped 
talking  till  this  witness  had  told  the  newest  news 
and  settled  the  latest  uncertainty.  Other  craftsmen 
can  "sink  the  shop"  sometimes,  and  interest  them- 
selves in  other  matters.  Not  so  with  a  pilot;  he 
must  devote  himself  wholly  to  his  profession  and  talk 
of  nothing  else;  for  it  would  be  small  gain  to  be 
perfect  one  day  and  imperfect  the  next.  He  has  no 
time  or  words  to  waste  if  he  would  keep  "posted." 

But  the  outsiders  had  a  hard  time  of  it.  No  par- 
ticular place  to  meet  and  exchange  information,  no 
wharf-boat  reports,  none  but  chance  and  unsatis- 
factory ways  of  getting  news.  The  consequence  was 
that  a  man  sometimes  had  to  run  five  hundred  miles 
of  river  on  information  that  was  a  week  or  ten  days 
old.  At  a  fair  stage  of  the  river  that  might  have 
answered,  but  when  the  dead  low  water  came  it  was 
destructive. 

Now  came  another  perfectly  logical  result.  The 
outsiders  began  to  ground  steamboats,  sink  them, 
and  get  into  all  sorts  of  trouble,  whereas  accidents 
seemed  to  keep  entirely  away  from  the  association 
men.  Wherefore  even  the  owners  and  captains  of 
boats  furnished  exclusively  with  outsiders,  and  pre- 
viously considered  to  be  wholly  independent  of  the 
association  and  free  to  comfort  themselves  with  brag 
and  laughter,  began  to  feel  pretty  uncomfortable. 
Still,  they  made  a  show  of  keeping  up  the  brag, 
until  one  black  day  when  every  captain  of  the  lot 
was  formally  ordered  to  immediately  discharge  his 
136 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

outsiders  and  take  association  pilots  in  their  stead. 
And  who  was  it  that  had  the  dashing  presumption 
to  do  that  ?  Alas !  it  came  from  a  power  behind  the 
throne  that  was  greater  than  the  throne  itself.  It 
was  the  underwriters ! 

It  was  no  time  to  "swap  knives."  Every  out- 
sider had  to  take  his  trunk  ashore  at  once.  Of  course 
it  was  supposed  that  there  was  collusion  between  the 
association  and  the  underwriters,  but  this  was  not 
so.  The  latter  had  come  to  comprehend  the  excel- 
lence of  the  "report"  system  of  the  association  and 
the  safety  it  secured,  and  so  they  had  made  their 
decision  among  themselves  and  upon  plain  business 
principles. 

There  was  weeping  and  wailing  and  gnashing  of 
teeth  in  the  camp  of  the  outsiders  now.  But  no 
matter,  there  was  but  one  course  for  them  to  pursue, 
and  they  pursued  it.  They  came  forward  in  couples 
and  groups,  and  proffered  their  twelve  dollars  and 
asked  for  membership.  They  were  surprised  to  learn 
that  several  new  by-laws  had  been  long  ago  added. 
For  instance,  the  initiation  fee  had  been  raised  to 
fifty  dollars;  that  sum  must  be  tendered,  and  also 
ten  per  cent,  of  the  wages  which  the  applicant  had 
received  each  and  every  month  since  the  founding  of 
the  association.  In  many  cases  this  amounted  to 
three  or  four  hundred  dollars.  Still,  the  association 
would  not  entertain  the  application  until  the  money 
was  present.  Even  then  a  single  adverse  vote  killed 
the  application.  Every  member  had  to  vote  yes  or 
no  in  person  and  before  witnesses;  so  it  took  weeks 
to  decide  a  candidacy,  because  many  pilots  were  so 


MARK     TWAIN 

long  absent  on  voyages.  However,  the  repentant 
sinners  scraped  their  savings  together,  and  one  by 
one,  by  our  tedious  voting  process,  they  were  added 
to  the  fold.  A  time  came,  at  last,  when  only  about 
ten  remained  outside.  They  said  they  would  starve 
before  they  would  apply.  They  remained  idle  a  long 
while,  because  of  course  nobody  could  venture  to 
employ  them. 

By  and  by  the  association  published  the  fact  that 
upon  a  certain  date  the  wages  would  be  raised  to  five 
hundred  dollars  per  month.  All  the  branch  associa- 
tions had  grown  strong  now,  and  the  Red  River  one 
had  advanced  wages  to  seven  hundred  dollars  a 
month.  Reluctantly  the  ten  outsiders  yielded,  in 
view  of  these  things,  and  made  application.  There 
was  another  new  by-law,  by  this  time,  which  required 
them  to  pay  dues  not  only  on  all  the  wages  they  had 
received  since  the  association  was  born,  but  also  on 
what  they  would  have  received  if  they  had  continued 
at  work  up  to  the  time  of  their  application,  instead  of 
going  off  to  pout  in  idleness.  It  turned  out  to  be  a 
difficult  matter  to  elect  them,  but  it  was  accomplished 
at  last.  The  most  virulent  sinner  of  this  batch  had 
stayed  out  and  allowed  "dues  "  to  accumulate  against 
him  so  long  that  he  had  to  send  in  six  hundred  and 
twenty-five  dollars  with  his  application. 

The  association  had  a  good  bank-account  now  and 
was  very  strong.  There  was  no  longer  an  outsider. 
A  by-law  was  added  forbidding  the  reception  of  any 
more  cubs  or  apprentices  for  five  years;  after  which 
time  a  limited  number  would  be  taken,  not  by  indi- 
viduals, but  by  the  association,  upon  these  terms :  the 
138 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

applicant  must  not  be  less  than  eighteen  years  old, 
and  of  respectable  family  and  good  character;  he 
must  pass  an  examination  as  to  education,  pay  a 
'thousand  dollars  in  advance  for  the  privilege  of  be- 
coming an  apprentice,  and  must  remain  under  the 
commands  of  the  association  until  a  great  part  of  the 
membership  (more  than  half,  I  think)  should  be 
willing  to  sign  his  application  for  a  pilot's  license. 

All  previously  articled  apprentices  were  now  taken 
away  from  their  masters  and  adopted  by  the  associa- 
tion. The  president  and  secretary  detailed  them  for 
service  on  one  boat  or  another,  as  they  chose,  and 
changed  them  from  boat  to  boat  according  to  certain 
rules.  If  a  pilot  could  show  that  he  was  in  infirm 
health  and  needed  assistance,  one  of  the  cubs  would 
be  ordered  to  go  with  him. 

The  widow  and  orphan  list  grew,  but  so  did  the 
association's  financial  resources.  The  association 
attended  its  own  funerals  in  state  and  paid  for  them. 
When  occasion  demanded,  it  sent  members  down  the 
river  upon  searches  for  the  bodies  of  brethren  lost  by 
steamboat  accidents;  a  search  of  this  kind  sometimes 
cost  a  thousand  dollars. 

The  association  procured  a  charter  and  went  into 
the  insurance  business  also.  It  not  only  insured  the 
lives  of  its  members,  but  took  risks  on  steamboats. 

The  organization  seemed  indestructible.  It  was 
the  tightest  monopoly  in  the  world.  By  the  United 
States  law  no  man  could  become  a  pilot  unless  two 
duly  licensed  pilots  signed  his  application,  and  now 
there  was  nobody  outside  of  the  association  com- 
petent to  sign.  Consequently  the  making  of  pilots 
139 


MARK    TWAIN 

was  at  an  end.  Every  year  some  would  die  and 
others  become  incapacitated  by  age  and  infirmity; 
there  would  be  no  new  ones  to  take  their  places.  In 
time  the  association  could  put  wages  up  to  any 
figure  it  chose;  and  as  long  as  it  should  be  wise 
enough  not  to  carry  the  thing  too  far  and  provoke 
the  national  government  into  amending  the  licensing 
system,  steamboat -owners  would  have  to  submit, 
since  there  would  be  no  help  for  it. 

The  owners  and  captains  were  the  only  obstruc- 
tion that  lay  between  the  association  and  absolute 
power,  and  at  last  this  one  was  removed.  Incredible 
as  it  may  seem,  the  owners  and  captains  deliberately 
did  it  themselves.  When  the  pilots'  association 
announced,  months  beforehand,  that  on  the  first  day 
of  September,  1861,  wages  would  be  advanced  to 
five  hundred  dollars  per  month,  the  owners  and 
captains  instantly  put  freights  up  a  few  cents,  and 
explained  to  the  farmers  along  the  river  the  necessity 
of  it,  by  calling  their  attention  to  the  burdensome 
rate  of  wages  about  to  be  established.  It  was  a 
rather  slender  argument,  but  the  farmers  did  not 
seem  to  detect  it.  It  looked  reasonable  to  them  that 
to  add  five  cents  freight  on  a  bushel  of  corn  was 
justifiable  under  the  circumstances,  overlooking  the 
fact  that  this  advance  on  a  cargo  of  forty  thousand 
sacks  was  a  good  deal  more  than  necessary  to  cover 
the  new  wages. 

So,  straightway  the  captains  and  owners  got  up  an 
association  of  their  own,  and  proposed  to  put  cap- 
tains' wages  up  to  five  hundred  dollars,  too,  and 
move  for  another  advance  in  freights.  It  was  a 
140 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

novel  idea,  but  of  course  an  effect  which  had  been 
produced  once  could  be  produced  again.  The  new 
association  decreed  (for  this  was  before  all  the  out- 
siders had  been  taken  into  the  pilots'  association) 
that  if  any  captain  employed  a  non-association  pilot, 
he  should  be  forced  to  discharge  him,  and  also  pay  a 
fine  of  five  hundred  dollars.  Several  of  these  heavy 
fines  were  paid  before  the  captains'  organization 
grew  strong  enough  to  exercise  full  authority  over  its 
membership;  but  all  that  ceased,  presently.  The 
captains  tried  to  get  the  pilots  to  decree  that  no 
member  of  their  corporation  should  serve  under  a 
non-association  captain;  but  this  proposition  was 
declined.  The  pilots  saw  that  they  would  be  backed 
up  by  the  captains  and  the  underwriters  anyhow,  and 
so  they  wisely  refrained  from  entering  into  entangling 
alliances. 

As  I  have  remarked,  the  pilots'  association  was 
now  the  compactest  monopoly  in  the  world,  perhaps, 
and  seemed  simply  indestructible.  And  yet  the  days 
of  its  glory  were  numbered.  First,  the  new  railroad, 
stretching  up  through  Mississippi,  Tennessee,  and 
Kentucky,  to  Northern  rail  way -centers,  began  to 
divert  the  passenger  travel  from  the  steamboats ;  next 
the  war  came  and  almost  entirely  annihilated  the 
steamboating  industry  during  several  years,  leaving 
most  of  the  pilots  idle  and  the  cost  of  living  advancing 
all  the  time;  then  the  treasurer  of  the  St.  Louis 
association  put  his  hand  into  the  till  and  walked  off 
with  every  dollar  of  the  ample  fund ;  and  finally,  the 
railroads  intruding  everywhere,  there  was  little  for 
steamers  to  do,  when  the  war  was  over,  but  carry 
141 


MARK    TWAIN 

freights;  so  straightway  some  genius  from  the  At- 
lantic coast  introduced  the  plan  of  towing  a  dozen 
steamer  cargoes  down  to  New  Orleans  at  the  tail  of 
a  vulgar  little  tug-boat ;  and  behold,  in  the  twinkling 
of  an  eye,  as  it  were,  the  association  and  the  noble 
science  of  piloting  were  things  of  the  dead  and  pa- 
thetic past ! 


CHAPTER  XVI 

RACING   DAYS 

IT  was  always  the  custom  for  the  boats  to  leave 
New  Orleans  between  four  and  five  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon.  From  three  o'clock  onward  they  would 
be  burning  rosin  and  pitch-pine  (the  sign  of  prepara- 
tion), and  so  one  had  the  picturesque  spectacle  of  a 
rank,  some  two  or  three  miles  long,  of  tall,  ascending 
columns  of  coal-black  smoke;  a  colonnade  which 
supported  a  sable  roof  of  the  same  smoke  blended 
together  and  spreading  abroad  over  the  city.  Every 
outward-bound  boat  had  its  flag  flying  at  the  jack- 
staff,  and  sometimes  a  duplicate  on  the  verge-staff 
astern.  Two  or  three  miles  of  mates  were  com- 
manding and  swearing  with  more  than  usual  em- 
phasis: countless  processions  of  freight  barrels  and 
boxes  were  spinning  athwart  the  levee  and  flying 
aboard  the  stage-planks;  belated  passengers  were 
dodging  and  skipping  among  these  frantic  things, 
hoping  to  reach  the  forecastle  companionway  alive, 
but  having  their  doubts  about  it;  women  with 
reticules  and  bandboxes  were  trying  to  keep  up  with 
husbands  freighted  with  carpet  sacks  and  crying 
babies,  and  making  a  failure  of  it  by  losing  their 
heads  in  the  whirl  and  roar  and  general  distraction; 
drays  and  baggage-vans  were  clattering  hither  and 


MARK    TWAIN 

thither  in  a  wild  hurry,  every  now  and  then  getting 
blocked  and  jammed  together,  and  then  during  ten 
seconds  one  could  not  see  them  for  the  profanity, 
except  vaguely  and  dimly;  every  windlass  connected 
with  every  fore-hatch,  from  one  end  of  that  long 
array  of  steamboats  to  the  other,  was  keeping  up  a 
deafening  whizz  and  whir,  lowering  freight  into  the 
hold,  and  the  half -naked  crews  of  perspiring  negroes 
that  worked  them  were  roaring  such  songs  as  "De 
Las'  Sack!  De  Las'  Sack!" — inspired  to  unimagin- 
able exaltation  by  the  chaos  of  turmoil  and  racket 
that  was  driving  everybody  else  mad.  By  this  time 
the  hurricane  and  boiler  decks  of  the  steamers  would 
be  packed  black  with  passengers.  The  "last  bells" 
would  begin  to  clang,  all  down  the  line,  and  then  the 
powwow  seemed  to  double;  in  a  moment  or  two  the 
final  warning  came — a  simultaneous  din  of  Chinese 
gongs,  with  the  cry,  "All  dat  ain't  goin',  please  to 
git  asho'!" — and  behold  the  powwow  quadrupled! 
People  came  swarming  ashore,  overturning  excited 
stragglers  that  were  trying  to  swarm  aboard.  One 
more  moment  later  a  long  array  of  stage-planks  was 
being  hauled  in,  each  with  its  customary  latest 
passenger  clinging  to  the  end  of  it  with  teeth,  nails, 
and  everything  else,  and  the  customary  latest  pro- 
crastinator  making  a  wild  spring  shoreward  over  his 
head. 

Now  a  number  of  the  boats  slide  backward  into  the 
stream,  leaving  wide  gaps  in  the  serried  rank  of 
steamers.  Citizens  crowd  the  decks  of  boats  that 
are  not  to  go,  in  order  to  see  the  sight.  Steamer 
after  steamer  straightens  herself  up,  gathers  all  her 
144 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

strength,  and  presently  comes  swinging  by,  under  a 
tremendous  head  of  steam,  with  flag  flying,  black 
smoke  rolling,  and  her  entire  crew  of  firemen  and 
deck-hands  (usually  swarthy  negroes)  massed  to- 
gether on  the  forecastle,  the  best  "voice"  in  the 
lot  towering  from  the  midst  (being  mounted  on  the 
capstan),  waving  his  hat  or  a  flag,  and  all  roaring 
a  mighty  chorus,  while  the  parting  cannons  boom 
and  the  multitudinous  spectators  wave  their  hats 
and  huzza!  Steamer  after  steamer  falls  into  line, 
and  the  stately  procession  goes  winging  its  flight  up 
the  river. 

In  the  old  times,  whenever  two  fast  boats  started 
out  on  a  race,  with  a  big  crowd  of  people  looking  on, 
it  was  inspiring  to  hear  the  crews  sing,  especially  if 
the  time  were  nightfall,  and  the  forecastle  lit  up 
with  the  red  glare  of  the  torch-baskets.  Racing  was 
royal  fun.  The  public  always  had  an  idea  that 
racing  was  dangerous;  whereas  the  opposite  was  the 
case — that  is,  after  the  laws  were  passed  which 
restricted  each  boat  to  just  so  many  pounds  of  steam 
to  the  square  inch.  No  engineer  was  ever  sleepy  or 
careless  when  his  heart  was  in  a  race.  He  was  con- 
stantly on  the  alert,  trying  gauge-cocks  and  watching 
things.  The  dangerous  place  was  on  slow,  plodding 
boats,  where  the  engineers  drowsed  around  and 
allowed  chips  to  get  into  the  "doctor"  and  shut  off 
the  water-supply  from  the  boilers. 

In  the  "flush  times"  of  steamboating,  a  race  be- 
tween two  notoriously  fleet  steamers  was  an  event 
of  vast  importance.  The  date  was  set  for  it  several 
weeks  in  advance,  and  from  that  time  forward  the 


MARK    TWAIN 

whole  Mississippi  valley  was  in  a  state  of  consum- 
ing excitement.  Politics  and  the  weather  were 
dropped,  and  people  talked  only  of  the  coming  race. 
As  the  time  approached,  the  two  steamers  "stripped  " 
and  got  ready.  Every  encumbrance  that  added 
weight,  or  exposed  a  resisting  surface  to  wind  or 
water,  was  removed,  if  the  boat  could  possibly  do 
without  it.  The  "spars,"  and  sometimes  even  their 
supporting  derricks,  were  sent  ashore,  and  no  means 
left  to  set  the  boat  afloat  in  case  she  got  aground. 
When  the  Eclipse  and  the  A.  L.  Shotwell  ran  their 
great  race  many  years  ago,  it  was  said  that  pains 
were  taken  to  scrape  the  gilding  off  the  fanciful 
device  which  hung  between  the  Eclipse's  chimneys, 
and  that  for  that  one  trip  the  captain  left  off  his 
kid  gloves  and  had  his  head  shaved.  But  I  always 
doubted  these  things. 

If  the  boat  was  known  to  make  her  best  speed 
when  drawing  five  and  a  half  feet  forward  and  five 
feet  aft,  she  carefully  loaded  to  that  exact  figure — 
she  wouldn't  enter  a  dose  of  homeopathic  pills  on 
her  manifest  after  that.  Hardly  any  passengers 
were  .taken,  because  they  not  only  add  weight  but 
they  'never  will  "trim  boat."  They  always  run  to 
the  side  when  there  is  anything  to  see,  whereas  a 
conscientious  and  experienced  steamboatman  would 
stick  to  the  center  of  the  boat  and  part  his  hair  in 
the  middle  with  a  spirit-level. 

No  way-freights  and  no  way-passengers  were  al- 
lowed, for  the  racers  would  stop  only  at  the  largest 
towns,  and  then  it  would  be  only  "touch  and  go." 
Coal-flats  and  wood-flats  were  contracted  for  before- 

146 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

hand,  and  these  were  kept  ready  to  hitch  on  to  the 
flying  steamers  at  a  moment's  warning.  Double 
crews  were  carried,  so  that  all  work  could  be  quickly 
done. 

The  chosen  date  being  come,  and  all  things  in 
readiness,  the  two  great  steamers  back  into  the 
stream,  and  lie  there  jockeying  a  moment,  apparently 
watching  each  other's  slightest  movement,  like 
sentient  creatures;  flags  drooping,  the  pent  stream 
shrieking  through  safety-valves,  the  black  smoke 
rolling  and  tumbling  from  the  chimneys  and  darken- 
ing all  the  air.  People,  people  everywhere;  the 
shores,  the  housetops,  the  steamboats,  the  ships, 
are  packed  with  them,  and  you  know  that  the 
borders  of  the  broad  Mississippi  are  going  to  be 
fringed  with  humanity  thence  northward  twelve  hun- 
dred miles,  to  welcome  these  racers. 

Presently  tall  columns  of  steam  burst  from  the 
'scape-pipes  of  both  steamers,  two  guns  boom  a 
good-by,  two  red-shirted  heroes  mounted  on  capstans 
wave  their  small  flags  above  the  massed  crews  on 
the  forecastles,  two  plaintive  solos  linger  on  the  air 
a  few  waiting  seconds,  two  mighty  choruses  burst 
forth — and  here  they  come!  Brass  bands  bray 
"Hail  Columbia,"  huzza  after  huzza  thunders  from 
the  shores,  and  the  stately  creatures  go  whistling  by 
like  the  wind. 

Those  boats  will  never  halt  a  moment  between 
New  Orleans  and  St.  Louis,  except  for  a  second  or 
two  at  large  towns,  or  to  hitch  thirty-cord  wood- 
boats  alongside.  You  should  be  on  board  when  they 
take  a  couple  of  those  wood-boats  in  tow  and  turn  a 
i47 


MARK     TWAIN 

swarm  of  men  into  each;  by  the  time  you  have  wiped 
your  glasses  and  put  them  on,  you  will  be  wondering 
what  has  become  of  that  wood. 

Two  nicely  matched  steamers  will  stay  in  sight  of 
each  other  day  after  day.  They  might  even  stay 
side  by  side,  but  for  the  fact  that  pilots  are  not  all 
alike,  and  the  smartest  pilots  will  win  the  race.  If 
one  of  the  boats  has  a  "lightning"  pilot,  whose 
"partner"  is  a  trifle  his  inferior,  you  can  tell  which 
one  is  on  watch  by  noting  whether  that  boat  has 
gained  ground  or  lost  some  during  each  four-hour 
stretch.  The  shrewdest  pilot  can  delay  a  boat  if  he 
has  not  a  fine  genius  for  steering.  Steering  is  a  very 
high  art.  One  must  not  keep  a  rudder  dragging 
across  a  boat's  stern  if  he  wants  to  get  up  the  river 
fast. 

There  is  a  great  difference  in  boats,  of  course. 
For  a  long  time  I  was  on  a  boat  that  was  so  slow 
we  used  to  forget  what  year  it  was  we  left  port  in. 
But  of  course  this  was  at  rare  intervals.  Ferry-boats 
used  to  lose  valuable  trips  because  their  passengers 
grew  old  and  died,  waiting  for  us  to  get  by.  This 
was  at  still  rarer  intervals.  I  had  the  documents 
for  these  occurrences,  but  through  carelessness  they 
have  been  mislaid.  This  boat,  the  John  J.  Roe,  was 
so  slow  that  when  she  finally  sunk  in  Madrid  Bend 
it  was  five  years  before  the  owners  heard  of  it.  That 
was  always  a  confusing  fact  to  me,  but  it  is  accord- 
ing to  the  record,  anyway.  She  was  dismally  slow; 
still,  we  often  had  pretty  exciting  times  racing  with 
islands,  and  rafts,  and  such  things.  One  trip,  how- 
ever, we  did  rather  well.  We  went  to  St.  Louis  in 
148 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

sixteen  days.  But  even  at  this  rattling  gait  I  think 
we  changed  watches  three  times  in  Fort  Adams 
reach,  which  is  five  miles  long.  A  "reach"  is  a 
piece  of  straight  river,  and  of  course  the  current 
drives  through  such  a  place  in  a  pretty  lively 
way. 

That  trip  we  went  to  Grand  Gulf,  from  New 
Orleans,  in  four  days  (three  hundred  and  forty 
miles) ;  the  Eclipse  and  Shot-well  did  it  in  one.  We 
were  nine  days  out,  in  the  chute  of  63  (seven  hun- 
dred miles) ;  the  Eclipse  and  Shotwell  went  there  in 
two  days.  Something  over  a  generation  ago,  a  boat 
called  the  /.  M.  White  went  from  New  Orleans  to 
Cairo  in  three  days,  six  hours,  and  forty-four  min- 
utes. In  1853  the  Eclipse  made  the  same  trip  in 
three  days,  three  hours,  and  twenty  minutes.1  In 
1870  the  R.  E.  Lee  did  it  in  three  days  and  one  hour. 
This  last  is  called  the  fastest  trip  on  record.  I  will 
try  to  show  that  it  was  not.  For  this  reason:  the 
distance  between  New  Orleans  and  Cairo,  when  the 
J.  M.  White  ran  it,  was  about  eleven  hundred  and 
six  miles;  consequently  her  average  speed  was  a 
trifle  over  fourteen  miles  per  hour.  In  the  Eclipse's 
day  the  distance  between  the  two  ports  had  become 
reduced  to  one  thousand  and  eighty  miles;  conse- 
quently her  average  speed  was  a  shade  under  four- 
teen and  three-eighths  miles  per  hour.  In  the 
R.  E.  Lee's  time  the  distance  had  diminished  to 
about  one  thousand  and  thirty  miles;  consequently 
her  average  was  about  fourteen  and  one-eighth 

'Time  disputed.  Some  authorities  add  i  hour  and  16  minutes 
to  this. 

149 


MARK    TWAIN 

miles  per  hour.    Therefore  the  Eclipse's  was  con- 
spicuously the  fastest  time  that  has  ever  been  made. 

THE  RECORD   OF   SOME   FAMOUS  TRIPS. 


[From  Commodore  Rollingpin's  Almanac.} 
FAST  TIME  ON  THE  WESTERN  WATERS. 

FROM  NEW  ORLEANS  TO  NATCHEZ — 268  MILES. 


Run  made  in 

D. 

H. 

M. 

1814. 

Orleans 

6 

6 

40 

1844.  Sultana 

1814. 

Comet 

5 

10 

O 

1851.  Magnolia 

1815. 

Enterprise 

4 

it 

20 

1853.  A.  L.  Shotwell 

1817. 

Washington 

4 

0 

1853-  Southern  Belle 

1817. 

Shelby 

3 

20 

1853.  Princess  (No.  4) 

1819. 

Paragon 

3 

8 

1853-  Eclipse 

1828. 

Tecumseh 

3 

.  -j 

2 

1855.  Princess  (New) 

1834- 

Tuscarora 

I 

21 

1855.  Natchez  (New) 

1838. 

Natchez 

I 

17 

1856.  Princess  (New) 

1840. 

Ed.  Shippen 

I 

8 

1870.  Natchez 

1842. 

Belle  of  the  West 

I 

IS 

1870.  R.  E.  Lee 

Run  made  in 

H.  M. 

19  45 

19  50 

19  49 

30  3 

30  26 

19  47 

18  53 

17  30 

17  30 

17  17 

17  II 


FROM  NEW  ORLEANS  TO  CAIRO — 1024  MILES. 

Run  made  in 

D.       H.       M. 


1844.  J.  M.  White 

3      6    44 

1869.  Dexter 

1852.  Reindeer 

3    «    as 

1870.  Natchez 

1853.  Eclipse 

344 

1870.  R.  E.  Lee 

1853.  A.  L.  Shotwell 

3       3     40 

FROM  NEW  ORLEANS  TO  LOUISVILLE  —  1440  MILES. 

Run  made  in 

D.       H.       M. 

1815.  Enterprise  ' 

as      2    40 

1840.  Ed.  Shippen 

1817.  Washington 

25      o      o 

1842.  Belle  of  the  West 

1817.  Shelby 

20      4    20 

1843.  Duke  of  Orleans 

1819.  Paragon 

18     10       0 

1844.  Sultana 

1828.  Tecumseh 

840 

1849.  Bostona 

1834.  Tuscarora 

7     16      o 

1851.  Belle  Key 

1837.  Gen.  Brown 

6      22         0 

1852.  Reindeer 

1837-  Randolph 

6      22         0 

1852.  Eclipse 

1837.  Empress 

6     17       o 

1853.  A.  L.  Shotwell 

1837.  Sultana 

6     15       o     1833.  Eclipse 

k.       M. 

*  * 

4     34 
10 


FROM  NEW  ORLEANS  TO  DONALDSONVILLE — 78  MILES. 


Run  made  in 


1852.  A.  L.  Shotwell 

1833.  Eclipse 

1854.  Sultana 

1856.  Princess 


1860.  Atlantic 
i860.  Gen.  Quitman 
1865.  Ruth 
1870.  R.  E.  Lee 


Run  made  in 

D.  X.  M. 
14 
14 
33 
13 
t 
•3 


Run  made  in 
H.  M. 
5  ii 
5  6 
4  43 
4  59 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 


FROM  NEW  ORLEANS  TO  ST.  LOUIS — 12 1 8  MILES. 


1844.  J.  M.  White 
1849.  Missouri 
1869.  Dexter 


Run  made  in 

D.       H.       M. 

3  23       9 

4  19      o 
490 


1870.  Natchez 
1870.  R.  E.  Lee 


Run  made  in 

D.      H.       M. 

3     21     57 
3     18     14 


1819.  Gen.  Pike 

1819.  Paragon 

1822.  Wheeling  Packet 

1837-  Moselle 

1843.  Duke  of  Orleans 


FROM  LOUISVILLE  TO  CINCINNATI — 14!  MILES. 

Run  made  in 
D.     H.     M. 

1843.  Congress 


Run  made  in 


1846.  Ben  Franklin  (No.  6)  n  45 

1852.  Alleghaney  10  38 

1852.  Pittsburgh  10  23 

1853-  Telegraph  (No.  3)  9  S3 


1842.  Congress 
1854-  Pike 


FROM  LOUISVILLE  TO  ST.  LOUIS — 75O  MILES. 

Run  made  in  Run  made  in 

D.       H.       M.  D.       H.       M. 

2       I       o     1854.  Northerner  I     22     30 

I     23       o     1855.  Southerner  I     19      o 


FROM  CINCINNATI  TO  PITTSBURG — 490  MILES. 


Run  made  in 
D.     H. 

1850.  Telegraph  (No.  2)  I     17 

1851.  Buckeye  State  i     16 


1852.  Pittsburgh 


Run  made  in 

D.       H. 

I     15 


FROM  ST.  LOUIS  TO  ALTON — 30  MILES. 

Run  made  in 


1853.  Altona 
1876.  Golden  Eagle 


1876.  War  Eagle 


Run  made  in 

H.       M. 

I     37 


MISCELLANEOUS  RUNS. 

In  June,  1859.  the  St.  Louis  and  Keokuk  Packet,  City  of  Louisiana, 
run  from  St.  Louis  to  Keokuk  (214  miles)  in  16  hours  and  20  minutes,  the  best 
time  on  record. 

In  1868  the  steamer  Hawkeye  State,  of  the  Northern  Line  Packet  Company, 
made  the  run  from  St.  Louis  to  St.  Paul  (800  miles  in  2  days  and  20  hours.  Never 
was  beaten. 

In  1853  the  steamer  Polar  Star  made  the  run  from  St.  Louis  to  St.  Joseph,  on 
the  Missouri  River,  in  64  hours.  In  July,  1856,  the  steamer  Jas.  H.  Lucas,  Andy 
Wineland,  Master,  made  the  same  run  in  60  hours  and  57  minutes.  The  distance 
between  the  ports  is  600  miles,  and  when  the  difficulties  of  navigating  the  tur- 
bulent Missouri  are  taken  into  consideration,  the  performance  of  the  Lucas  deserves 
especial  mention. 

THE  RUN  OF  THE  ROBERT  E.  LEE. 

The  time  made  by  the  R.  E.  Lee  from  New  Orleans  to  St.  Louis  in  1870,  in  her 
famous  race  with  the  Natchez,  is  the  best  on  record,  and,  inasmuch  as  the  race 
created  a  national  interest,  we  give  her  time-table  from  port  to  port. 


MARK     TWAIN 


Left  New  Orleans.  Thursday,  June  30,  1870.  at  4  o'clock  and  55  minutes,  p.  H.; 

D.     H.        If. 

D.       H.    I*' 

Carroflton                                            2?H 

Vicksburg 

o    38 

Harry  H21S                                            o}$ 

Milliken's  Bend 

2     37 

Red  Church                                         39 

Bailey's 

3     48 

Bonnet  Carre                                      38 

Lake  Providence 

5     47 

College  Point                                       5O>$ 

Greenville 

10    55 

Donaldsonviile                                    59 

Napoleon 

16      22 

Pbqnemine                                            SH 

White  River 

16    56 

Baton  Rouge                                       25 

Australia 

19      o 

Bayoa  Sara                                10    26 

Helena 

23     25 

Red  River                                    12     so 

Half  Mile  below  St.  Francis 

0        C 

Stamps                                          13     56 

Memphis 

6       9 

Bryaro                                             15     SiJi 

Foot  of  Island  37 

9       0 

Hinderson's                                  16     29 

Foot  of  Island  26 

13     30 

Natchez                                        17     n 

Tow-head,  Island  14 

17     23 

Cole's  Creek                                18     53 

New  Madrid 

19     50 

Waterproof                                  19    21 

Dry  Bar  No.  10 

20     37 

Rodney                                         20    45 

Foot  of  Island  8 

21     25 

St.  Joseph                                    21       a 

Upper  Tow-head  —  Lucas  Bend  3      o      o 

Grand  Golf                                  22       6 

Cairo                                            310 

Hard  Tunes                                 22     18 

St.  Louis                                      3     18     14 

Half  Mile  below  Warrenton  I       o       o 

The  Lee  landed  at  St.  Louis  at  11.25  A-  M-.  on  July  4,  1870 — six  hours  and  thirty- 
six  minutes  ahead  of  the  Natchez.  The  officers  of  the  Natchez  claimed  seven 
hoars  and  one  minute  stoppage  on  account  of  fog  and  repairing  machinery.  The 
R.  E.  Lee  was  commanded  by  Captain  John  W.  Cannon,  and  the  Natchez  was  ia 
>  of  that  veteran  Southern  boatman.  Captain  Thomas  P.  Leathers. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

CUT-OFFS   AND    STEPHEN 

THESE  dry  details  are  of  importance  in  one  par- 
ticular. They  give  me  an  opportunity  of  intro- 
ducing one  of  the  Mississippi's  oddest  peculiarities — 
that  of  shortening  its  length  from  time  to  time.  If 
you  will  throw  a  long,  pliant  apple-paring  over  your 
shoulder,  it  will  pretty  fairly  shape  itself  into  an 
average  section  of  the  Mississippi  River;  that  is,  the 
nine  or  ten  hundred  miles  stretching  from  Cairo, 
Illinois,  southward  to  New  Orleans,  the  same  being 
wonderfully  crooked,  with  a  brief  straight  bit  here 
and  there  at  wide  intervals.  The  two-hundred-mile 
stretch  from  Cairo  northward  to  St.  Louis  is  by  no 
means  so  crooked,  that  being  a  rocky  country  which 
the  river  cannot  cut  much. 

The  water  cuts  the  alluvial  banks  of  the  "lower  " 
river  into  deep  horseshoe  curves;  so  deep,  indeed, 
that  in  some  places  if  you  were  to  get  ashore  at  one 
extremity  of  the  horseshoe  and  walk  across  the  neck, 
half  or  three-quarters  of  a  mile,  you  could  sit  down 
and  rest  a  couple  of  hours  while  your  steamer  was 
coming  around  the  long  elbow  at  a  speed  of  ten 
miles  an  hour  to  take  you  on  board  again.  When 
the  river  is  rising  fast,  some  scoundrel  whose  planta- 
tion is  back  in  the  country,  and  therefore  of  inferior 
153 


MARK     TWAIN 

value,  has  only  to  watch  his  chance,  cut  a  little 
gutter  across  the  narrow  neck  of  land  some  dark 
night,  and  turn  the  water  into  it,  and  in  a  wonder- 
fully short  time  a  miracle  has  happened :  to  wit,  the 
whole  Mississippi  has  taken  possession  of  that  little 
ditch,  and  placed  the  countryman's  plantation  on 
its  bank  (quadrupling  its  value),  and  that  other 
party's  formerly  valuable  plantation  finds  itself 
away  out  yonder  on  a  big  island ;  the  old  watercourse 
around  it  will  soon  shoal  up,  boats  cannot  approach 
within  ten  miles  of  it,  and  down  goes  its  value  to  a 
fourth  of  its  former  worth.  Watches  are  kept  on 
those  narrow  necks  at  needful  times,  and  if  a  man 
happens  to  be  caught  cutting  a  ditch  across  them,  the 
chances  are  all  against  his  ever  having  another  op- 
portunity to  cut  a  ditch. 

Pray  observe  some  of  the  effects  of  this  ditching 
business.  Once  there  was  a  neck  opposite  Port  Hud- 
son, Louisiana,  which  was  only  half  a  mile  across  in 
its  narrowest  place.  You  could  walk  across  there 
in  fifteen  minutes;  but  if  you  made  the  journey 
around  the  cape  on  a  raft,  you  traveled  thirty-five 
miles  to  accomplish  the  same  thing.  In  1722  the 
river  darted  through  that  neck,  deserted  its  old  bed, 
and  thus  shortened  itself  thirty-five  miles.  In  the 
same  way  it  shortened  itself  twenty-five  miles  at 
Black  Hawk  Point  in  1699.  Below  Red  River  Land- 
ing, Raccourci  cut-off  was  made  (forty  or  fifty  years 
ago,  I  think).  This  shortened  the  river  twenty- 
eight  miles.  In  our  day,  if  you  travel  by  river 
from  the  southernmost  of  these  three  cut-offs  to 
the  northernmost,  you  go  only  seventy  miles.  To 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

do  the  same  thing  a  hundred  and  seventy-six  years 
ago,  one  had  to  go  a  hundred  and  fifty-eight  miles 
— a  shortening  of  eighty-eight  miles  in  that  trifling 
distance.  At  some  forgotten  time  in  the  past,  cut- 
offs were  made  above  Vidalia,  Louisiana,  at  Island 
92,  at  Island  84,  and  at  Hale's  Point.  These  short- 
ened the  river,  in  the  aggregate,  seventy-seven  miles. 

Since  my  own  day  on  the  Mississippi,  cut-offs  have 
been  made  at  Hurricane  Island,  at  Island  100,  at 
Napoleon,  Arkansas,  at  Walnut  Bend,  and  at  Coun- 
cil Bend.  These  shortened  the  river,  in  the  aggre- 
gate, sixty-seven  miles.  In  my  own  time  a  cut-off 
was  made  at  American  Bend,  which  shortened  the 
river  ten  miles  or  more. 

Therefore  the  Mississippi  between  Cairo  and  New 
Orleans  was  twelve  hundred  and  fifteen  miles  long 
one  hundred  and  seventy-six  years  ago.  It  was 
eleven  hundred  and  eighty  after  the  cut-off  of  1722. 
It  was  one  thousand  and  forty  after  the  American 
Bend  cut-off.  It  has  lost  sixty-seven  miles  since. 
Consequently,  its  length  is  only  nine  hundred  and 
seventy-three  miles  at  present. 

Now,  if  I  wanted  to  be  one  of  those  ponderous 
scientific  people,  and  "let  on"  to  prove  what  had 
occurred  in  the  remote  past  by  what  had  occurred  in 
a  given  time  in  the  recent  past,  or  what  will  occur 
in  the  far  future  by  what  has  occurred  in  late  years, 
what  an  opportunity  is  here!  Geology  never  had 
such  a  chance,  nor  such  exact  data  to  argue  from! 
Nor  "development  of  species,"  either!  Glacial 
epochs  are  great  things,  but  they  are  vague — vague. 
Please  observe : 

iS5 


MARK     TWAIN 

In  the  space  of  one  hundred  and  seventy-six  years 
the  Lower  Mississippi  has  shortened  itself  two  hun- 
dred and  forty-two  miles.  That  is  an  average  of  a 
trifle  over  one  mile  and  a  third  per  year.  Therefore, 
any  calm  person,  who  is  not  blind  or  idiotic,  can  see 
that  in  the  Old  Oolitic  Silurian  Period,  just  a  million 
years  ago  next  November,  the  Lower  Mississippi 
River  was  upward  of  one  million  three  hundred 
thousand  miles  long,  and  stuck  out  over  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico  like  a  fishing-rod.  And  by  the  same 
token  any  person  can  see  that  seven  hundred  and 
forty-two  years  from  now  the  Lower  Mississippi  will 
be  only  a  mile  and  three-quarters  long,  and  Cairo 
and  New  Orleans  will  have  joined  their  streets  to- 
gether, and  be  plodding  comfortably  along  under  a 
single  mayor  and  a  mutual  board  of  aldermen. 
There  is  something  fascinating  about  science.  One 
gets  such  wholesale  returns  of  conjecture  out  of  such 
a  trifling  investment  of  fact. 

When  the  water  begins  to  flow  through  one  of 
those  ditches  I  have  been  speaking  of,  it  is  time  for 
the  people  thereabouts  to  move.  The  water  cleaves 
the  banks  away  like  a  knife.  By  the  time  the  ditch 
has  become  twelve  or  fifteen  feet  wide,  the  calamity 
is  as  good  as  accomplished,  for  no  power  on  earth 
can  stop  it  now.  When  the  width  has  reached  a 
hundred  yards,  the  banks  begin  to  peel  off  in  slices 
half  an  acre  wide.  The  current  flowing  around  the 
bend  traveled  formerly  only  five  miles  an  hour;  now 
it  is  tremendously  increased  by  the  shortening  of  the 
distance.  I  was  on  board  the  first  boat  that  tried 
to  go  through  the  cut-off  at  American  Bend,  but  we 
156 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

did  not  get  through.  It  was  toward  midnight,  and 
a  wild  night  it  was — thunder,  lightning,  and  torrents 
of  rain.  It  was  estimated  that  the  current  in  the 
cut-off  was  making  about  fifteen  or  twenty  miles  an 
hour;  twelve  or  thirteen  was  the  best  our  boat  could 
do,  even  in  tolerably  slack  water,  therefore  perhaps 
we  were  foolish  to  try  the  cut-off.  However,  Mr. 
Brown  was  ambitious,  and  he  kept  on  trying.  The 
eddy  running  up  the  bank,  under  the  "point,"  was 
about  as  swift  as  the  current  out  in  the  middle;  so 
we  would  go  flying  up  the  shore  like  a  lightning 
express-train,  get  on  a  big  head  of  steam,  and  "stand 
by  for  a  surge"  when  we  struck  the  current  that  was 
whirling  by  the  point.  But  all  our  preparations  were 
useless.  The  instant  the  current  hit  us  it  spun  us 
around  like  a  top,  the  water  deluged  the  forecastle, 
and  the  boat  careened  so  far  over  that  one  could 
hardly  keep  his  feet.  The  next  instant  we  were 
away  down  the  river,  clawing  with  might  and  main 
to  keep  out  of  the  woods.  We  tried  the  experiment 
four  times.  I  stood  on  the  forecastle  companion- 
way  to  see.  It  was  astonishing  to  observe  how  sud- 
denly the  boat  would  spin  around  and  turn  tail  the 
moment  she  emerged  from  the  eddy  and  the  current 
struck  her  nose.  The  sounding  concussion  and  the 
quivering  would  have  been  about  the  same  if  she 
had  come  full  speed  against  a  sand-bank.  Under  the 
lightning  flashes  one  could  see  the  plantation  cabins 
and  the  goodly  acres  tumble  into  the  river,  and  the 
crash  they  made  was  not  a  bad  effort  at  thunder. 
Once,  when  we  spun  around,  we  only  missed  a  house 
about  twenty  feet  that  had  a  light  burning  in  the 
iS7 


MARK     TWAIN 

window,  and  in  the  same  instant  that  house  went 
overboard.  Nobody  could  stay  on  our  forecastle; 
the  water  swept  across  it  in  a  torrent  every  time  we 
plunged  athwart  the  current.  At  the  end  of  our  fourth 
effort  we  brought  up  in  the  woods  two  miles  below 
the  cut-off;  all  the  country  there  was  overflowed, 
of  course.  A  day  or  two  later  the  cut-off  was  three- 
quarters  of  a  mile  wide,  and  boats  passed  up  through 
it  without  much  difficulty,  and  so  saved  ten  miles. 

The  old  Raccourci  cut-off  reduced  the  river's 
length  twenty-eight  miles.  There  used  to  be  a 
tradition  connected  with  it.  It  was  said  that  a  boat 
came  along  there  in  the  night  and  went  around  the 
enormous  elbow  the  usual  way,  the  pilots  not  know- 
ing that  the  cut-off  had  been  made.  It  was  a  grisly, 
hideous  night,  and  all  shapes  were  vague  and  dis- 
torted. The  old  bend  had  already  begun  to  fill  up, 
and  the  boat  got  to  running  away  from  mysterious 
reefs,  and  occasionally  hitting  one.  The  perplexed 
pilots  fell  to  swearing,  and  finally  uttered  the  entirely 
unnecessary  wish  that  they  might  never  get  out  of 
that  place.  As  always  happens  in  such  cases,  that 
particular  prayer  was  answered,  and  the  others 
neglected.  So  to  this  day  that  phantom  steamer  is 
still  butting  around  in  that  deserted  river,  trying  to 
find  her  way  out.  More  than  one  grave  watchman 
has  sworn  to  me  that  on  drizzling,  dismal  nights,  he 
has  glanced  fearfully  down  that  forgotten  river  as  he 
passed  the  head  of  the  island,  and  seen  the  faint 
glow  of  the  specter  steamer's  lights  drifting  through 
the  distant  gloom,  and  heard  the  muffled  cough  of  her 
'scape-pipes  and  the  plaintive  cry  of  her  leadsmen. 
158 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

In  the  absence  of  further  statistics,  I  beg  to 
close  this  chapter  with  one  more  reminiscence  of 
"Stephen." 

Most  of  the  captains  and  pilots  held  Stephen's  note 
for  borrowed  sums,  ranging  from  two  hundred  and 
fifty  dollars  upward.  Stephen  never  paid  one  of 
these  notes,  but  he  was  very  prompt  and  very  zealous 
about  renewing  them  every  twelve  months. 

Of  course  there  came  a  time,  at  last,  when  Stephen 
could  no  longer  borrow  of  his  ancient  creditors;  so 
he  was  obliged  to  lie  in  wait  for  new  men  who  did 
not  know  him.  Such  a  victim  was  good-hearted, 
simple-natured  Young  Yates  (I  use  a  fictitious  name, 
but  the  real  name  began,  as  this  one  does,  with  a  Y). 
Young  Yates  graduated  as  a  pilot,  got  a  berth,  and 
when  the  month  was  ended  and  he  stepped  up  to 
the  clerk's  office  and  received  his  two  hundred  and 
fifty  dollars  in  crisp  new  bills,  Stephen  was  there! 
His  silvery  tongue  began  to  wag,  and  in  a  very  little 
while  Yates's  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  had 
changed  hands.  The  fact  was  soon  known  at  pilot 
headquarters,  and  the  amusement  and  satisfaction 
of  the  old  creditors  were  large  and  generous.  But 
innocent  Yates  never  suspected  that  Stephen's 
promise  to  pay  promptly  at  the  end  of  the  week  was 
a  worthless  one.  Yates  called  for  his  money  at  the 
stipulated  time;  Stephen  sweetened  him  up  and  put 
him  off  a  week.  He  called  then,  according  to  agree- 
ment, and  came  away  sugar-coated  again,  but  suffer- 
ing under  another  postponement.  So  the  thing 
went  on.  Yates  haunted  Stephen  week  after  week, 
to  no  purpose,  and  at  last  gave  it  up.  And  then 


MARK     TWAIN 

straightway  Stephen  began  to  haunt  Yates!  Wher- 
ever Yates  appeared,  there  was  the  inevitable 
Stephen.  And  not  only  there,  but  beaming  with 
affection  and  gushing  with  apologies  for  not  being 
able  to  pay.  By  and  by,  whenever  poor  Yates  saw 
him  coming,  he  would  turn  and  fly,  and  drag  his 
company  with  him,  if  he  had  company ;  but  it  was  of 
no  use;  his  debtor  would  run  him  down  and  corner 
him.  Panting  and  red-faced,  Stephen  would  come, 
with  outstretched  hands  and  eager  eyes,  invade  the 
conversation,  shake  both  of  Yates's  arms  loose  in 
their  sockets,  and  begin: 

"My,  what  a  race  I've  had!  I  saw  you  didn't  see 
me,  and  so  I  clapped  on  all  steam  for  fear  I'd  miss 
you  entirely.  And  here  you  are!  there,  just  stand 
so,  and  let  me  look  at  you !  Just  the  same  old  noble 
countenance.  [To  Yates's  friend :]  Just  look  at  him ! 
Look  at  him!  Ain't  it  just  good  to  look  at  him! 
Ain't  it  now?  Ain't  he  just  a  picture!  Some  call 
him  a  picture ;  I  call  him  a  panorama !  That's  what 
he  is — an  entire  panorama.  And  now  I'm  reminded ! 
How  I  do  wish  I  could  have  seen  you  an  hour  earlier ! 
For  twenty-four  hours  I've  been  saving  up  that  two 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars  for  you;  been  looking  for 
you  everywhere.  I  waited  at  the  Planter's  from  six 
yesterday  evening  till  two  o'clock  this  morning, 
without  rest  or  food.  My  wife  says,  'Where  have 
you  been  all  night ? '  I  said,  'This  debt  lies  heavy  on 
my  mind.'  She  says,  'In  all  my  days  I  never  saw  a 
man  take  a  debt  to  heart  the  way  you  do.'  I  said, 
'It's  my  nature;  how  can  /  change  it?'  She  says, 
'Well,  do  go  to  bed  and  get  some  rest.'  I  said,  'Not 
1 60 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

till  that  poor,  noble  young  man  has  got  his  money.' 
So  I  set  up  all  night,  and  this  morning  out  I  shot, 
and  the  first  man  I  struck  told  me  you  had  shipped 
on  the  Grand  Turk  and  gone  to  New  Orleans.  Well, 
sir,  I  had  to  lean  up  against  a  building  and  cry. 
So  help  me  goodness,  I  couldn't  help  it.  The  man 
that  owned  the  place  come  out  cleaning  up  with  a 
rag,  and  said  he  didn't  like  to  have  people  cry  against 
his  building,  and  then  it  seemed  to  me  that  the 
whole  world  had  turned  against  me,  and  it  wasn't 
any  use  to  live  any  more;  and  coming  along  an  hour 
ago,  suffering  no  man  knows  what  agony,  I  met  Jim 
Wilson  and  paid  him  the  two  hundred  and  fifty 
dollars  on  account;  and  to  think  that  here  you  are, 
now,  and  I  haven't  got  a  cent !  But  as  sure  as  I  am 
standing  here  on  this  ground  on  this  particular 
brick — there,  I've  scratched  a  mark  on  the  brick 
to  remember  it  by  —  I'll  borrow  that  money  and 
pay  it  over  to  you  at  twelve  o'clock  sharp,  to- 
morrow! Now.  stand  so;  let  me  look  at  you  just 
once  more." 

And  so  on.  Yates's  life  became  a  burden  to  him. 
He  could  not  escape  his  debtor  and  his  debtor's  awful 
sufferings  on  account  of  not  being  able  to  pay.  He 
dreaded  to  show  himself  in  the  street,  lest  he  should 
find  Stephen  lying  in  wait  for  him  at  the  corner. 

Bogart's  billiard  -  saloon  was  a  great  resort  for 
pilots  in  those  days.  They  met  there  about  as  much 
to  exchange  river  news  as  to  play.  One  morning 
Yates  was  there;  Stephen  was  there,  too,  but  kept 
out  of  sight.  But  by  and  by,  when  about  all  the 
pilots  had  arrived  who  were  in  town,  Stephen  sud- 
161 


MARK    TWAIN 

denly  appeared  in  the  midst,  and  rushed  for  Yates 
as  for  a  long-lost  brother. 

"Oh,  I  am  so  glad  to  see  you!  Oh  my  soul,  the 
sight  of  you  is  such  a  comfort  to  my  eyes !  Gentle- 
men, I  owe  all  of  you  money;  among  you  I  owe 
probably  forty  thousand  dollars.  I  want  to  pay  it; 
I  intend  to  pay  it — every  last  cent  of  it.  You  all 
know,  without  my  telling  you,  what  sorrow  it  has 
cost  me  to  remain  so  long  under  such  deep  obliga- 
tions to  such  patient  and  generous  friends;  but  the 
sharpest  pang  I  suffer — by  far  the  sharpest — is  from 
the  debt  I  owe  to  this  noble  young  man  here;  and  I 
have  come  to  this  place  this  morning  especially  to 
make  the  announcement  that  I  have  at  last  found  a 
method  whereby  I  can  pay  off  all  my  debts !  And  most 
especially  I  wanted  him  to  be  here  when  I  announced 
it.  Yes,  my  faithful  friend,  my  benefactor,  I've  found 
the  method!  I've  found  the  method  to  pay  off  all 
my  debts,  and  you'll  get  your  money !"  Hope  dawned 
in  Yates's  eyes;  then  Stephen,  beaming  benignantly, 
and  placing  his  hand  upon  Yates's  head,  added,  "I 
am  going  to  pay  them  off  in  alphabetical  order!" 

Then  he  turned  and  disappeared.  The  full  signifi- 
cance of  Stephen's  "method"  did  not  dawn  upon  the 
perplexed  and  musing  crowd  for  some  two  minutes; 
and  then  Yates  murmured  with  a  sigh : 

"Well,  the  Y's  stand  a  gaudy  chance.  He  won't 
get  any  further  than  the  C's  in  this  world,  and  I 
reckon  that  after  a  good  deal  of  eternity  has  wasted 
away  in  the  next  one,  I'll  still  be  referred  to  up  there 
as  'that  poor,  ragged  pilot  that  came  here  from  St. 
Louis  in  the  early  days!'" 
162 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

I   TAKE   A   FEW   EXTRA   LESSONS 

DURING  the  two  or  two  and  a  half  years  of  my 
apprenticeship  I  served  under  many  pilots,  and 
had  experience  of  many  kinds  of  steamboatmen  and 
many  varieties  of  steamboats;  for  it  was  not  always 
convenient  for  Mr.  Bixby  to  have  me  with  him,  and 
in  such  cases  he  sent  me  with  somebody  else.  I 
am  to  this  day  profiting  somewhat  by  that  experi- 
ence; for  in  that  brief,  sharp  schooling,  I  got  per- 
sonally and  familiarly  acquainted  with  about  all  the 
different  types  of  human  nature  that  are  to  be  found 
in  fiction,  biography,  or  history.  The  fact  is  daily 
borne  in  upon  me  that  the  average  shore-employ- 
ment requires  as  much  as  forty  years  to  equip  a  man 
with  this  sort  of  an  education.  When  I  say  I  am 
still  profiting  by  this  thing,  I  do  not  mean  that  it 
has  constituted  me  a  judge  of  men— no,  it  has  not 
done  that,  for  judges  of  men  are  born,  not  made. 
My  profit  is  various  in  kind  and  degree,  but  the 
feature  of  it  which  I  value  most  is  the  zest  which 
that  early  experience  has  given  to  my  later  reading. 
When  I  find  a  well-drawn  character  in  fiction  or 
biography  I  generally  take  a  warm  personal  interest 
in  him,  for  the  reason  that  I  have  known  him  before 
— met  him  on  the  river. 

163 


MARK    TWAIN 

The  figure  that  comes  before  me  oftenest,  out  of 
the  shadows  of  that  vanished  time,  is  that  of  Brown, 
of  the  steamer  Pennsylvania— the  man  referred  to  in 
a  former  chapter,  whose  memory  was  so  good  and 
tiresome.  He  was  a  middle-aged,  long,  slim,  bony, 
smooth-shaven,  horse-faced,  ignorant,  stingy,  mali- 
cious, snarling,  fault-hunting,  mote-magnifying  ty- 
rant. I  early  got  the  habit  of  coming  on  watch  with 
dread  at  my  heart.  No  matter  how  good  a  time  I 
might  have  been  having  with  the  off-watch  below, 
and  no  matter  how  high  my  spirits  might  be  when 
I  started  aloft,  my  soul  became  lead  in  my  body  the 
moment  I  approached  the  pilot-house. 

I  still  remember  the  first  time  I  ever  entered  the 
presence  of  that  man.  The  boat  had  backed  out 
from  St.  Louis  and  was  "straightening  down."  I 
ascended  to  the  pilot-house  in  high  feather,  and  very 
proud  to  be  semi-ofncially  a  member  of  the  executive 
family  of  so  fast  and  famous  a  boat.  Brown  was  at 
the  wheel.  I  paused  in  the  middle  of  the  room,  all 
fixed  to  make  my  bow,  but  Brown  did  not  look 
around.  I  thought  he  took  a  furtive  glance  at  me 
out  of  the  corner  of  his  eye,  but  as  not  even  this 
notice  was  repeated,  I  judged  I  had  been  mistaken. 
By  this  time  he  was  picking  his  way  among  some 
dangerous  "breaks"  abreast  the  woodyards;  there- 
fore it  would  not  be  proper  to  interrupt  him;  so  I 
stepped  softly  to  the  high  bench  and  took  a  seat. 

There  was  silence  for  ten  minutes;  then  my  new 
boss  turned  and  inspected  me  deliberately  and  pains- 
takingly from  head  to  heel  for  about — as  it  seemed  to 
me — a  quarter  of  an  hour.  After  which  he  removed 
164 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

his  countenance  and  I  saw  it  no  more  for  some 
seconds;  then  it  came  around  once  more,  and  this 
question  greeted  me: 

"Are  you  Horace  Bigsby's  cub?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

After  this  there  was  a  pause  and  another  inspec- 
tion. Then: 

"What's  your  name?" 

I  told  him.  He  repeated  it  after  me.  It  was 
probably  the  only  thing  he  ever  forgot ;  for  although 
I  was  with  him  many  months  he  never  addressed 
himself  to  me  in  any  other  way  than  "Here!"  and 
then  his  command  followed. 

"Where  was  you  born?" 

"In  Florida,  Missouri." 

A  pause.     Then: 

"Bern  sight  better  stayed  there!" 

By  means  of  a  dozen  or  so  of  pretty  direct  ques- 
tions, he  pumped  my  family  history  out  of  me. 

The  leads  were  going  now  in  the  first  crossing. 
This  interrupted  the  inquest.  When  the  leads  had 
been  laid  in  he  resumed : 

"How  long  you  been  on  the  river?" 

I  told  him.     After  a  pause : 

"Where'd  you  get  them  shoes?" 

I  gave  him  the  information. 

"Hold  up  your  foot!" 

I  did  so.  He  stepped  back,  examined  the  shoe 
minutely  and  contemptuously,  scratching  his  head 
thoughtfully,  tilting  his  high  sugar-loaf  hat  well 
forward  to  facilitate  the  operation,  then  ejaculated, 
"Well,  I'll  be  dod  denied!"  and  returned  to  his  wheel. 
165 


MARK  TWAIN' 

What  occasion  there  was  to  be  dod  denied  about 
it  is  a  thing  which  is  still  as  much  of  a  mystery  to 
me  now  as  it  was  then.  It  must  have  been  all  of 
fifteen  minutes — fifteen  minutes  of  dull,  homesick 
silence — before  that  long  horse-face  swung  round 
upon  me  again — and  then  what  a  change !  It  was  as 
red  as  fire,  and  every  muscle  in  it  was  working. 
Now  came  this  shriek: 

"Here!    You  going  to  set  there  all  day?" 

I  lit  in  the  middle  of  the  floor,  shot  there  by  the 
electric  suddenness  of  the  surprise.  As  soon  as  I 
could  get  my  voice  I  said  apologetically:  "I  have  had 
no  orders,  sir." 

"You've  had  no  orders!  My,  what  a  fine  bird  we 
are !  We  must  have  orders!  Our  father  was  a  gentle- 
man— owned  slaves — and  we've  been  to  school.  Yes, 
we  are  a  gentleman,  too,  and  got  to  have  orders! 
ORDERS,  is  it?  ORDERS  is  what  you  want!  Dod 
dern  my  skin,  Til  learn  you  to  swell  yourself  up  and 
blow  around  here  about  your  dod-derned  orders! 
G'way  from  the  wheel!"  (I  had  approached  it 
without  knowing  it.) 

I  moved  back  a  step  or  two  and  stood  as  in  a 
dream,  all  my  senses  stupefied  by  this  frantic 
assault. 

"What  you  standing  there  for?  Take  that  ice- 
pitcher  down  to  the  texas-tender !  Come,  move 
along,  and  don't  you  be  all  day  about  it!" 

The  moment  I  got  back  to  the  pilot-house  Brown 
said: 

"Here!  What  was  you  doing  down  there  all  this; 
time?" 

166 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

"I  couldn't  find  the  texas-tender;  I  had  to  go  all 
the  way  to  the  pantry." 

"Derned  likely  story!     Fill  up  the  stove." 

I  proceeded  to  do  so.  He  watched  me  like  a  cat. 
Presently  he  shouted : 

' '  Put  down  that  shovel !  Derndest  numskull  I  ever 
saw — ain't  even  got  sense  enough  to  load  up  a 
stove." 

All  through  the  watch  this  sort  of  thing  went  on. 
Yes,  and  the  subsequent  watches  were  much  like  it, 
during  a  stretch  of  months.  As  I  have  said,  I  soon 
got  the  habit  of  coming  on  duty  with  dread.  The 
moment  I  was  in  the  presence,  even  in  the  darkest 
night,  I  could  feel  those  yellow  eyes  upon  me,  and 
knew  their  owner  was  watching  for  a  pretext  to  spit 
out  some  venom  on  me.  Preliminarily  he  would  say : 

"Here!     Take  the  wheel." 

Two  minutes  later: 

' 'Where  in  the  nation  you  going  to?  Pull  her 
down!  pull  her  down!" 

After  another  moment: 

"Say!  You  going  to  hold  her  all  day?  Let  her 
go — meet  her!  meet  her!" 

Then  he  would  jump  from  the  bench,  snatch  the 
wheel  from  me,  and  meet  her  himself,  pouring  out 
wrath  upon  me  all  the  time. 

George  Ritchie  was  the  other  pilot's  cub.  He  was 
having  good  times  now;  for  his  boss,  George  Ealer, 
was  as  kind-hearted  as  Brown  wasn't.  Ritchie  had 
steered  for  Brown  the  season  before;  consequently,  he 
knew  exactly  how  to  entertain  himself  and  plague 
me,  all  by  the  one  operation.  Whenever  I  took  the 
167 


MARK    TWAIN 

wheel  for  a  moment  on  Ealer's  watch,  Ritchie  would 
sit  back  on  the  bench  and  play  Brown,  with  con- 
tinual ejaculations  of  "Snatch  her!  snatch  her! 
Derndest  mud-cat  I  ever  saw!"  "Here!  Where  are 
you  going  now?  Going  to  run  over  that  snag?" 
"Pull  her  down!  Don't  you  hear  me?  Pull  her 
down!"  "There  she  goes!  Just  as  I  expected!  I 
told  you  not  to  cramp  that  reef.  G'way  from  the 
wheel!" 

So  I  always  had  a  rough  time  of  it,  no  matter 
whose  watch  it  was;  and  sometimes  it  seemed  to  me 
that  Ritchie's  good-natured  badgering  was  pretty 
nearly  as  aggravating  as  Brown's  dead-earnest 
nagging. 

I  often  wanted  to  kill  Brown,  but  this  would  not 
answer.  A  cub  had  to  take  everything  his  boss  gave, 
in  the  way  of  vigorous  comment  and  criticism;  and 
we  all  believed  that  there  was  a  United  States  law 
making  it  a  penitentiary  offense  to  strike  or  threaten 
a  pilot  who  was  on  duty.  However,  I  could  imagine 
myself  killing  Brown ;  there  was  no  law  against  that ; 
and  that  was  the  thing  I  used  always  to  do  the 
moment  I  was  abed.  Instead  of  going  over  my  river 
in  my  mind,  as  was  my  duty,  I  threw  business  aside 
for  pleasure,  and  killed  Brown.  I  killed  Brown  every 
night  for  months;  not  in  old,  stale,  commonplace 
ways,  but  in  new  and  picturesque  ones — ways  that 
were  sometimes  surprising  for  freshness  of  design 
and  ghastliness  of  situation  and  environment. 

Brown  was  always  watching  for  a  pretext  to  find 
fault;  and  if  he  could  find  no  plausible  pretext,  he 
would  invent  one.  He  would  scold  you  for  shaving 
168 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

a  shore,  and  for  not  shaving  it;  for  hugging  a  bar, 
and  for  not  hugging  it;  for  "pulling  down"  when  not 
invited,  and  for  not  pulling  down  when  not  invited; 
for  firing  up  without  orders,  and  for  waiting  for 
orders.  In  a  word,  it  was  his  invariable  rule  to  find 
fault  with  everything  you  did ;  and  another  invariable 
rule  of  his  was  to  throw  all  his  remarks  (to  you)  into 
the  form  of  an  insult. 

One  day  we  were  approaching  New  Madrid,  bound 
down  and  heavily  laden.  Brown  was  at  one  side  of 
the  wheel,  steering;  I  was  at  the  other,  standing  by 
to  "pull  down"  or  "shove  up."  He  cast  a  furtive 
glance  at  me  every  now  and  then.  I  had  long  ago 
learned  what  that  meant;  viz.,  he  was  trying  to 
invent  a  trap  for  me.  I  wondered  what  shape  it  was 
going  to  take.  By  and  by  he  stepped  back  from 
the  wheel  and  said  in  his  usual  snarly  way: 

"Here!  See  if  you've  got  gumption  enough  to 
round  her  to." 

This  was  simply  bound  to  be  a  success;  nothing 
could  prevent  it;  for  he  had  never  allowed  me  to 
round  the  boat  to  before;  consequently,  no  matter 
how  I  might  do  the  thing,  he  could  find  free  fault  with 
it.  He  stood  back  there  with  his  greedy  eye  on  me, 
and  the  result  was  what  might  have  been  foreseen :  I 
lost  my  head  in  a  quarter  of  a  minute,  and  didn't 
know  what  I  was  about ;  I  started  too  early  to  bring 
the  boat  around,  but  detected  a  green  gleam  of  joy  in 
Brown's  eye,  and  corrected  my  mistake.  I  started 
around  once  more  while  too  high  up,  but  corrected 
myself  again  in  time.  I  made  other  false  moves,  and 
still  managed  to  save  myself;  but  at  last  I  grew  so 
169 


MARK    TWAIN 

confused  and  anxious  that  I  tumbled  into  the  very 
worst  blunder  of  all — I  got  too  far  down  before  begin- 
ning to  fetch  the  boat  around.  Brown's  chance  was 
come. 

His  face  turned  red  with  passion;  he  made  one 
bound,  hurled  me  across  the  house  with  a  sweep  of 
his  arm,  spun  the  wheel  down,  and  began  to  pour  out 
a  stream  of  vituperation  upon  me  which  lasted  till  he 
was  out  of  breath.  In  the  course  of  this  speech  he 
called  me  all  the  different  kinds  of  hard  names  he 
could  think  of,  and  once  or  twice  I  thought  he  was 
even  going  to  swear — but  he  had  never  done  that,  and 
he  didn't  this  time.  "  Dod  dern  "  was  the  nearest  he 
ventured  to  the  luxury  of  swearing,  for  he  had  been 
brought  up  with  a  wholesome  respect  for  future  fire 
and  brimstone. 

That  was  an  uncomfortable  hour;  for  there  was  a 
big  audience  on  the  hurricane-deck.  When  I  went  to 
bed  that  night,  I  killed  Brown  in  seventeen  different 
ways — all  of  them  new. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

BROWN   AND   I    EXCHANGE   COMPLIMENTS 

TWO  trips  later  I  got  into  serious  trouble.  Brown 
was  steering;  I  was  "pulling  down."  My 
younger  brother  appeared  on  the  hurricane-deck,  and 
shouted  to  Brown  to  stop  at  some  landing  or  other,  a 
mile  or  so  below.  Brown  gave  no  intimation  that  he 
had  heard  anything.  But  that  was  his  way :  he  never 
condescended  to  take  notice  of  an  under-clerk.  The 
wind  was  blowing;  Brown  was  deaf  (although  he 
always  pretended  he  wasn't),  and  I  very  much 
doubted  if  he  had  heard  the  order.  If  I  had  had  two 
heads,  I  would  have  spoken ;  but  as  I  had  only  one,  it 
seemed  judicious  to  take  care  of  it;  so  I  kept  still. 

Presently,  sure  enough,  we  went  sailing  by  that 
plantation.  Captain  Klinefelter  appeared  on  the 
deck,  and  said: 

"Let  her  come  around,  sir,  let  her  come  around. 
Didn't  Henry  tell  you  to  land  here?" 

"No,  sir!" 

"I  sent  him  up  to  do  it." 

"He  did  come  up;  and  that's  all  the  good  it  dono, 
the  dod-derned  fool.  He  never  said  anything." 

"Didn't  you  hear  him?"  asked  the  captain  of  me. 

Of  course  I  didn't  want  to  be  mixed  up  in  this  busi- 
ness, but  there  was  no  way  to  avoid  it;  so  I  said: 
171 


MARK     TWAIN 

"Yes,  sir." 

I  knew  what  Brown's  next  remark  would  be,  before 
he  uttered  it.  It  was : 

' '  Shut  your  mouth !  You  never  heard  anything  of 
the  kind." 

I  closed  my  mouth,  according  to  instructions.  An 
hour  later  Henry  entered  the  pilot-house,  unaware  of 
what  had  been  going  on.  He  was  a  thoroughly  in- 
offensive boy,  and  I  was  sorry  to  see  him  come,  for  I 
knew  Brown  would  have  no  pity  on  him.  Brown 
began,  straightway: 

"Here!  Why  didn't  you  tell  me  we'd  got  to  land 
at  that  plantation?" 

"I  did  tell  you,  Mr.  Brown." 

"It's  a  lie!" 

I  said: 

"You  lie,  yourself.     He  did  tell  you." 

Brown  glared  at  me  in  unaffected  surprise;  and 
for  as  much  as  a  moment  he  was  entirely  speechless ; 
then  he  shouted  to  me: 

"I'll  attend  to  your  case  in  a  half  a  minute!"  then 
to  Henry,  "And  you  leave  the  pilot-house;  out  with 
you!" 

It  was  pilot  law,  and  must  be  obeyed.  The  boy 
started  out,  and  even  had  his  foot  on  the  upper  step 
outside  the  door,  when  Brown,  with  a  sudden  access 
of  fury,  picked  up  a  ten-pound  lump  of  coal  and 
sprang  after  him;  but  I  was  between,  with  a  heavy 
stool,  and  I  hit  Brown  a  good  honest  blow  which 
stretched  him  out. 

I  had  committed  the  crime  of  crimes — I  had  lifted 
my  hand  against  a  pilot  on  duty !  I  supposed  I  was 
172 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

booked  for  the  penitentiary  sure,  and  couldn't  be 
booked  any  surer  if  I  went  on  and  squared  my  long 
account  with  this  person  while  I  had  the  chance; 
consequently  I  stuck  to  him  and  pounded  him  with 
my  fists  a  considerable  time.  I  do  not  know  how 
long,  the  pleasure  of  it  probably  made  it  seem  longer 
than  it  really  was;  but  in  the  end  he  struggled  free 
and  jumped  up  and  sprang  to  the  wheel:  a  very- 
natural  solicitude,  for,  all  this  time,  here  was  this 
steamboat  tearing  down  the  river  at  the  rate  of  fifteen 
miles  an  hour  and  nobody  at  the  helm!  However, 
Eagle  Bend  was  two  miles  wide  at  this  bank-full 
stage,  and  correspondingly  long  and  deep:  and  the 
boat  was  steering  herself  straight  down  the  middle 
and  taking  no  chances.  Still,  that  was  only  luck — 
a  body  might  have  found  her  charging  into  the  woods. 
Perceiving  at  a  glance  that  the  Pennsylvania  was  in 
no  danger,  Brown  gathered  up  the  big  spy-glass, 
war-club  fashion,  and  ordered  me  out  of  the  pilot- 
house with  more  than  Comanche  bluster.  But  I  was 
not  afraid  of  him  now;  so,  instead  of  going,  I  tarried, 
and  criticized  his  grammar.  I  reformed  his  ferocious 
speeches  for  him,  and  put  them  into  good  English, 
calling  his  attention  to  the  advantage  of  pure  Eng- 
lish over  the  bastard  dialect  of  the  Pennsylvania 
collieries  whence  he  was  extracted.  He  could  have 
done  his  part  to  admiration  in  a  cross-fire  of  mere 
vituperation,  of  course;  but  he  was  not  equipped  for 
this  species  of  controversy;  so  he  presently  laid 
aside  his  glass  and  took  the  wheel,  muttering  and 
shaking  his  head;  and  I  retired  to  the  bench.  The 
racket  had  brought  everybody  to  the  hurricane- 
i73 


MARK    TWAIN 

deck,  and  I  trembled  when  I  saw  the  old  captain 
looking  up  from  amid  the  crowd.  I  said  to  myself, 
"Now  I  am  done  for!"  for  although,  as  a  rule,  he  was 
so  fatherly  and  indulgent  toward  the  boat's  family, 
and  so  patient  of  minor  shortcomings,  he  could  be 
stern  enough  when  the  fault  was  worth  it. 

I  tried  to  imagine  what  he  would  do  to  a  cub  pilot 
who  had  been  guilty  of  such  a  crime  as  mine,  com- 
mitted on  a  boat  guard-deep  with  costly  freight  and 
alive  with  passengers.  Our  watch  was  nearly  ended. 
I  thought  I  would  go  and  hide  somewhere  till  I  got  a 
chance  to  slide  ashore.  So  I  slipped  out  of  the  pilot- 
house, and  down  the  steps,  and  around  to  the  texas- 
door,  and  was  in  the  act  of  gliding  within,  when  the 
captain  confronted  me !  I  dropped  my  head,  and  he 
stood  over  me  in  silence  a  moment  or  two,  then  said 
impressively : 

"Follow  me." 

I  dropped  into  his  wake;  he  led  the  way  to  his 
parlor  in  the  forward  end  of  the  texas.  We  were 
alone,  now.  He  closed  the  after  door;  then  moved 
slowly  to  the  forward  one  and  closed  that.  He  sat 
down;  I  stood  before  him.  He  looked  at  me  some 
little  time,  then  said: 

"So  you  have  been  fighting  Mr.  Brown?" 

I  answered  meekly: 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Do  you  know  that  that  is  a  very  serious  matter?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Are  you  aware  that  this  boat  was  plowing  down 
the  river  fully  five  minutes  with  no  one  at  the 
wheel?" 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Did  you  strike  him  first?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"What  with?" 

"A  stool,  sir." 

"Hard?" 

"Middling,  sir." 

"Did  it  knock  him  down?" 

"He— he  fell,  sir." 

"Did  you  follow  it  up?  Did  you  do  anything 
further?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"What  did  you  do?" 

' '  Pounded  him,  sir. ' ' 

"Pounded  him?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Did  you  pound  him  much?  that  is,  severely?" 

"One  might  call  it  that,  sir,  maybe." 

"I'm  deuced  glad  of  it!  Hark  ye,  never  mention 
that  I  said  that.  You  have  been  guilty  of  a  great 
crime;  and  don't  you  ever  be  guilty  of  it  again,  on 
this  boat.  But — lay  for  him  ashore!  Give  him  a 
good  sound  thrashing,  do  you  hear?  I'll  pay  the  ex- 
penses. Now  go — and  mind  you,  not  a  word  of  this 
to  anybody.  Clear  out  with  you!  You've  been 
guilty  of  a  great  crime,  you  whelp!" 

I  slid  out,  happy  with  the  sense  of  a  close  shave  and 
a  mighty  deliverance;  and  I  heard  him  laughing  to 
himself  and  slapping  his  fat  thighs  after  I  had  closed 
his  door. 

When  Brown  came  off  watch  he  went  straight  to 
the  captain,  who  was  talking  with  some  passengers 


MARK    TWAIN 

on  the  boiler -deck,  and  demanded  that  I  be  put 
ashore  in  New  Orleans — and  added: 

"I'll  never  turn  a  wheel  on  this  boat  again  while 
that  cub  stays." 

The  captain  said: 

"But  he  needn't  come  round  when  you  are  on 
watch,  Mr.  Brown." 

"I  won't  even  stay  on  the  same  boat  with  him. 
One  of  us  has  got  to  go  ashore." 

"Very  well,"  said  the  captain,  "let  it  be  yourself," 
and  resumed  his  talk  with  the  passengers. 

During  the  brief  remainder  of  the  trip  I  knew  how 
an  emancipated  slave  feels,  for  I  was  an  emancipated 
slave  myself.  While  we  lay  at  landings  I  listened  to 
George  Baler's  flute,  or  to  his  readings  from  his  two 
Bibles,  that  is  to  say,  Goldsmith  and  Shakespeare,  or 
I  played  chess  with  him — and  would  have  beaten  him 
sometimes,  only  he  always  took  back  his  last  move 
and  ran  the  game  out  differently. 


CHAPTER  XX 

A   CATASTROPHE 

WE  lay  three  days  in  New  Orleans,  but  the 
captain  did  not  succeed  in  finding  another 
pilot,  so  he  proposed  that  I  should  stand  a  daylight 
watch  and  leave  the  night  watches  to  George  Ealer. 
But  I  was  afraid;  I  had  never  stood  a  watch  of  any 
sort  by  myself,  and  I  believed  I  should  be  sure  to  get 
into  trouble  in  the  head  of  some  chute,  or  ground  the 
boat  in  a  near  cut  through  some  bar  or  other. 
Brown  remained  in  his  place,  but  he  would  not 
travel  with  me.  So  the  captain  gave  me  an  order 
on  the  captain  of  the  A.  T.  Lacey  for  a  passage 
to  St.  Louis,  and  said  he  would  find  a  new  pilot  there 
and  my  steersman's  berth  could  then  be  resumed. 
The  Lacey  was  to  leave  a  couple  of  days  after  the 
Pennsylvania. 

The  night  before  the  Pennsylvania  left,  Henry  and 
I  sat  chatting  on  a  freight  pile  on  the  levee  till  mid- 
night. The  subject  of  the  chat,  mainly,  was  one 
which  I  think  we  had  not  exploited  before — steam- 
boat disasters.  One  was  then  on  its  way  to  us,  little 
as  we  suspected  it ;  the  water  which  was  to  make  the 
steam  which  should  cause  it  was  washing  past  some 
point  fifteen  hundred  miles  up  the  river  while  we 
talked — but  it  would  arrive  at  the  right  time  and  the 
12  i77 


MARK     TWAIN 

right  place.  We  doubted  if  persons  not  clothed  with 
authority  were  of  much  use  in  cases  of  disaster  and 
attendant  panic,  still  they  might  be  of  some  use;  so 
we  decided  that  if  a  disaster  ever  fell  within  our  expe- 
rience we  would  at  least  stick  to  the  boat,  and  give 
such  minor  service  as  chance  might  throw  in  the  way. 
Henry  remembered  this,  afterward,  when  the  dis- 
aster came,  and  acted  accordingly. 

The  Lacey  started  up  the  river  two  days  behind  the 
Pennsylvania.  We  touched  at  Greenville,  Missis- 
sippi, a  couple  of  days  out,  and  somebody  shouted: 

"The  Pennsylvania  is  blown  up  at  Ship  Island,  and 
a  hundred  and  fifty  lives  lost !" 

At  Napoleon,  Arkansas,  the  same  evening,  we  got 
an  extra,  issued  by  a  Memphis  paper,  which  gave 
some  particulars.  It  mentioned  my  brother,  and  said 
he  was  not  hurt. 

Further  up  the  river  we  got  a  later  extra.  My 
brother  was  again  mentioned,  but  this  time  as  being 
hurt  beyond  help.  We  did  not  get  full  details  of  the 
catastrophe  until  we  reached  Memphis.  This  is  the 
sorrowful  story: 

It  was  six  o'clock  on  a  hot  summer  morning.  The 
Pennsylvania  was  creeping  along,  north  of  Ship 
Island,  about  sixty  miles  below  Memphis,  on  a  half- 
head  of  steam,  towing  a  wood-flat  which  was  fast  be-, 
ing  emptied.  George  Ealer  was  in  the  pilot-house- 
alone,  I  think;  the  second  engineer  and  a  striker  had 
the  watch  in  the  engine-room ;  the  second  mate  had 
the  watch  on  deck;  George  Black,  Mr.  Wood,  and  my 
brother,  clerks,  were  asleep,  as  were  also  Brown  and 
the  head  engineer,  the  carpenter,  the  chief  mate, 
178 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

and  one  striker;  Captain  Klinefelter  was  in  the 
barber's  chair,  and  the  barber  was  preparing  to  shave 
him.  There  were  a  good  many  cabin  passengers 
aboard,  and  three  or  four  hundred  deck  passengers — 
so  it  was  said  at  the  time — and  not  very  many  of 
them  were  astir.  The  wood  being  nearly  all  out  of 
the  flat  now,  Ealer  rang  to  "come  ahead"  full  of 
steam,  and  the  next  moment  four  of  the  eight 
boilers  exploded  with  a  thunderous  crash,  and  the 
whole  forward  third  of  the  boat  was  hoisted  toward 
the  sky !  The  main  part  of  the  mass,  with  the  chim- 
neys, dropped  upon  the  boat  again,  a  mountain  of 
riddled  and  chaotic  rubbish — and  then,  after  a  little, 
fire  broke  out. 

Many  people  were  flung  to  considerable  distances 
and  fell  in  the  river;  among  these  were  Mr.  Wood  and 
my  brother  and  the  carpenter.  The  carpenter  was 
still  stretched  upon  his  mattress  when  he  struck  the 
water  seventy-five  feet  from  the  boat.  Brown,  the 
pilot,  and  George  Black,  chief  clerk,  were  never  seen 
or  heard  of  after  the  explosion.  The  barber's  chair, 
with  Captain  Klinefelter  in  it  and  unhurt,  was  left 
with  its  back  overhanging  vacancy — everything  for- 
ward of  it,  floor  and  all,  had  disappeared;  and  the 
stupefied  barber,  who  was  also  unhurt,  stood  with 
one  toe  projecting  over  space,  still  stirring  his  lather 
unconsciously  and  saying  not  a  word. 

When  George  Ealer  saw  the  chimneys  plunging 
aloft  in  front  of  him,  he  knew  what  the  matter  was; 
so  he  muffled  his  face  in  the  lapels  of  his  coat,  and 
pressed  both  hands  there  tightly  to  keep  this  pro- 
tection in  its  place  so  that  no  steam  could  get  to  his 
179 


MARK    TWAIN 

nose  or  mouth.  He  had  ample  time  to  attend  to 
these  details  while  he  was  going  up  and  returning. 
He  presently  landed  on  top  of  the  unexploded 
boilers,  forty  feet  below  the  former  pilot-house,  ac- 
companied by  his  wheel  and  a  rain  of  other  stuff,  and 
enveloped  in  a  cloud  of  scalding  steam.  All  of  the 
many  who  breathed  that  steam  died;  none  escaped. 
But  Ealer  breathed  none  of  it.  He  made  his  way  to 
the  free  air  as  quickly  as  he  could;  and  when  the 
steam  cleared  away  he  returned  and  climbed  up  on 
the  boilers  again,  and  patiently  hunted  out  each  and 
every  one  of  his  chessmen  and  the  several  joints 
of  his  flute. 

By  this  time  the  fire  was  beginning  to  threaten. 
Shrieks  and  groans  filled  the  air.  A  great  many 
persons  had  been  scalded,  a  great  many  crippled ;  the 
explosion  had  driven  an  iron  crowbar  through  one 
man's  body — I  think  they  said  he  was  a  priest.  He 
did  not  die  at  once,  and  his  sufferings  were  very 
dreadful.  A  young  French  naval  cadet  of  fifteen, 
son  of  a  French  admiral,  was  fearfully  scalded,  but 
bore  his  tortures  manfully.  Both  mates  were  badly 
scalded,  but  they  stood  to  their  posts,  nevertheless. 
They  drew  the  wood-boat  aft,  and  they  and  the  cap- 
tain fought  back  the  frantic  herd  of  frightened  im- 
migrants till  the  wounded  could  be  brought  there 
and  placed  in  safety  first. 

When  Mr.  Wood  and  Henry  fell  in  the  water  they 
struck  out  for  shore,  which  was  only  a  few  hundred 
yards  away;  but  Henry  presently  said  he  believed 
he  was  not  hurt  (what  an  unaccountable  error !)  and 
therefore  would  swim  back  to  the  boat  and  help 
1 80 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

save  the  wounded.  So  they  parted  and  Henry  re- 
turned. 

By  this  time  the  fire  was  making  fierce  headway, 
and  several  persons  who  were  imprisoned  under  the 
ruins  were  begging  piteously  for  help.  All  efforts  to 
conquer  the  fire  proved  fruitless,  so  the  buckets  were 
presently  thrown  aside  and  the  officers  fell  to  with 
axes  and  tried  to  cut  the  prisoners  out.  A  striker 
was  one  of  the  captives;  he  said  he  was  not  injured, 
but  could  not  free  himself,  and  when  he  saw  that  the 
fire  was  likely  to  drive  away  the  workers  he  begged 
that  some  one  would  shoot  him,  and  thus  save  him 
from  the  more  dreadful  death.  The  fire  did  drive 
the  axmen  away,  and  they  had  to  listen,  helpless,  to 
this  poor  fellow's  supplications  till  the  flames  ended 
his  miseries. 

The  fire  drove  all  into  the  wood-flat  that  could  be 
accommodated  there;  it  was  cut  adrift  then,  and  it 
and  the  burning  steamer  floated  down  the  river 
toward  Ship  Island.  They  moored  the  flat  at  the 
head  of  the  island,  and  there,  unsheltered  from  the 
blazing  sun,  the  half -naked  occupants  had  to  remain, 
without  food  or  stimulants,  or  help  for  their  hurts, 
during  the  rest  of  the  day.  A  steamer  came  along, 
finally,  and  carried  the  unfortunates  to  Memphis, 
and  there  the  most  lavish  assistance  was  at  once 
forthcoming.  By  this  time  Henry  was  insensible. 
The  physicians  examined  his  injuries  and  saw  that 
they  were  fatal,  and  naturally  turned  their  main 
attention  to  patients  who  could  be  saved. 

Forty  of  the  wounded  were  placed  upon  pallets 
on  the  floor  of  a  great  public  hall,  and  among  these 
181 


MARK     TWAIN 

was  Henry.  There  the  ladies  of  Memphis  came 
every  day,  with  flowers,  fruits,  and  dainties  and 
delicacies  of  all  kinds,  and  there  they  remained  and 
nursed  the  wounded.  All  the  physicians  stood 
watches  there,  and  all  the  medical  students ;  and  the 
rest  of  the  town  furnished  money,  or  whatever  else 
was  wanted.  And  Memphis  knew  how  to  do  all 
these  things  well ;  for  many  a  disaster  like  the  Penn- 
sylvania's had  happened  near  her  doors,  and  she 
was  experienced,  above  all  other  cities  on  the  river, 
in  the  gracious  office  of  the  Good  Samaritan. 

The  sight  I  saw  when  I  entered  that  large  hall  was 
new  and  strange  to  me.  Two  long  rows  of  prostrate 
forms — more  than  forty  in  all — and  every  face  and 
head  a  shapeless  wad  of  loose  raw  cotton.  It  was  a 
gruesome  spectacle.  I  watched  there  six  days  and 
nights,  and  a  very  melancholy  experience  it  was. 
There  was  one  daily  incident  which  was  peculiarly 
depressing :  this  was  the  removal  of  the  doomed  to  a 
chamber  apart.  It  was  done  in  order  that  the  morale 
of  the  other  patients  might  not  be  injuriously  affected 
by  seeing  one  of  their  number  in  the  death-agony. 
The  fated  one  was  always  carried  out  with  as  little 
stir  as  possible,  and  the  stretcher  was  always  hidden 
from  sight  by  a  wall  of  assistants;  but  no  matter: 
everybody  knew  what  that  cluster  of  bent  forms,, 
with  its  muffled  step  and  its  slow  movement,  meant ; 
and  all  eyes  watched  it  wistfully,  and  a  shudder  went 
abreast  of  it  like  a  wave. 

I  saw  many  poor  fellows  removed  to  the  "death- 
room,"  and  saw  them  no  more  afterward.  But  I 
our  chief  mate  carried  thither  more  than  once. 
182 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

His  hurts  were  frightful,  especially  his  scalds.  He 
was  clothed  in  linseed  oil  and  raw  cotton  to  his 
waist,  and  resembled  nothing  human.  He  was  often 
out  of  his  mind ;  and  then  his  pains  would  make  him 
rave  and  shout  and  sometimes  shriek.  Then,  after 
a  period  of  dumb  exhaustion,  his  disordered  imagina- 
tion would  suddenly  transform  the  great  apartment 
into  a  forecastle,  and  the  hurrying  throng  of  nurses 
into  the  crew;  and  he  would  come  to  a  sitting  posture 
and  shout,  "Hump  yourselves,  hump  yourselves,  you 
petrifactions,  snail-bellies,  pall-bearers!  going  to  be 
all  day  getting  that  hatful  of  freight  out?"  and  sup- 
plement this  explosion  with  a  firmament-obliterating 
irruption  of  profanity  which  nothing  could  stay  or 
stop  till  his  crater  was  empty.  And  now  and  then 
while  these  frenzies  possessed  him,  he  would  tear  off 
handfuls  of  the  cotton  and  expose  his  cooked  flesh 
to  view.  It  was  horrible.  It  was  bad  for  the  others, 
of  course — this  noise  and  these  exhibitions;  so  the 
doctors  tried  to  give  him  morphine  to  quiet  him. 
But,  in  his  mind  or  out  of  it,  he  would  not  take  it. 
He  said  his  wife  had  been  killed  by  that  treacherous 
drug,  and  he  would  die  before  he  would  take  it. 
He  suspected  that  the  doctors  were  concealing  it 
in  his  ordinary  medicines  and  in  his  water — so  he 
ceased  from  putting  either  to  his  lips.  Once,  when 
he  had  been  without  water  during  two  sweltering 
days,  he  took  the  dipper  in  his  hand,  and  the  sight 
of  the  limpid  fluid,  and  the  misery  of  his  thirst, 
tempted  him  almost  beyond  his  strength;  but  he 
mastered  himself  and  threw  it  away,  and  after  that 
he  allowed  no  more  to  be  brought  near  him.  Three 
183 


MARK    TWAIN 

times  I  saw  him  carried  to  the  death-room,  insensible 
and  supposed  to  be  dying;  but  each  time  he  revived, 
cursed  his  attendants,  and  demanded  to  be  taken 
back.  He  lived  to  be  mate  of  a  steamboat  again. 
But  he  was  the  only  one  who  went  to  the  death- 
room  and  returned  alive.  Dr.  Peyton,  a  principal 
physician,  and  rich  in  all  the  attributes  that  go  to 
constitute  high  and  flawless  character,  did  all  that 
educated  judgment  and  trained  skill  could  do  for 
Henry;  but,  as  the  newspapers  had  said  in  the  begin- 
ning, his  hurts  were  past  help.  On  the  evening  of 
the  sixth  day  his  wandering  mind  busied  itself  with 
matters  far  away,  and  his  nerveless  fingers  "picked 
at  his  coverlet."  His  hour  had  struck;  we  bore  him 
to  the  death-room,  poor  boy. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

A   SECTION   IN   MY   BIOGRAPHY 

IN  due  course  I  got  my  license.  I  was  a  pilot 
now,  full-fledged.  I  dropped  into  casual  employ- 
ments; no  misfortunes  resulting,  intermittent  work 
gave  place  to  steady  and  protracted  engagements. 
Time  drifted  smoothly  and  prosperously  on,  and  I 
supposed — and  hoped — that  I  was  going  to  follow 
the  river  the  rest  of  my  days,  and  die  at  the  wheel 
when  my  mission  was  ended.  But  by  and  by  the 
war  came,  commerce  was  suspended,  my  occupation 
was  gone. 

I  had  to  seek  another  livelihood.  So  I  became  a 
silver-miner  in  Nevada;  next,  a  newspaper  reporter; 
next,  a  gold-miner  in  California;  next,  a  reporter  in 
San  Francisco;  next,  a  special  correspondent  in  the 
Sandwich  Islands;  next,  a  roving  correspondent  in 
Europe  and  the  East;  next,  an  instructional  torch- 
bearer  on  the  lecture  platform;  and,  finally,  I  became 
a  scribbler  of  books,  and  an  immovable  fixture  among 
the  other  rocks  of  New  England. 

In  so  few  words  have  I  disposed  of  the  twenty -one 
slow-drifting  years  that  have  come  and  gone  since 
I  last  looked  from  the  windows  of  a  pilot-house. 

Let  us  resume,  now. 

185 


CHAPTER  XXII 

I   RETURN   TO   MY   MUTTONS 

AFTER  twenty-one  years'  absence  I  felt  a  very 
,/\  strong  desire  to  see  the  river  again,  and  the 
steamboats,  and  such  of  the  boys  as  might  be  left; 
so  I  resolved  to  go  out  there.  I  enlisted  a  poet  for 
company,  and  a  stenographer  to  "take  him  down," 
and  started  westward  about  the  middle  of  April. 

As  I  proposed  to  make  notes,  with  a  view  to  print- 
ing, I  took  some  thought  as  to  methods  of  procedure. 
I  reflected  that  if  I  were  recognized,  on  the  river,  I 
should  not  be  as  free  to  go  and  come,  talk,  inquire, 
and  spy  around,  as  I  should  be  if  unknown;  I  re- 
membered that  it  was  the  custom  of  steamboatmen 
in  the  old  times  to  load  up  the  confiding  stranger 
with  the  most  picturesque  and  admirable  lies,  and 
put  the  sophisticated  friend  off  with  dull  and  in- 
effectual facts:  so  I  concluded  that,  from  a  business 
point  of  view,  it  would  be  an  advantage  to  disguise 
our  party  with  fictitious  names.  The  idea  was  cer- 
tainly good,  but  it  bred  infinite  bother;  for  although 
Smith,  Jones,  and  Johnson  are  easy  names  to  remem- 
ber when  there  is  no  occasion  to  remember  them,  it  is 
next  to  impossible  to  recollect  them  when  they  are 
wanted.  How  do  criminals  manage  to  keep  a  brand- 
new  alias  in  mind  ?  This  is  a  great  mystery.  I  was 
186 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

innocent;  and  yet  was  seldom  able  to  lay  my  hand 
on  my  new  name  when  it  was  needed;  and  it  seemed 
to  me  that  if  I  had  had  a  crime  on  my  conscience 
to  further  confuse  me,  I  could  never  have  kept  the 
name  by  me  at  all. 

We  left  per  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  at  8  A.M. 
April  1 8. 

Evening. — Speaking  of  dress.     Grace  and  picturesqueness 
drop  gradually  out  of  it  as  one  travels  away  from  New  York. 

I  find  that  among  my  notes.  It  makes  no  differ- 
ence which  direction  you  take,  the  fact  remains  the 
same.  Whether  you  move  north,  south,  east,  or 
west,  no  matter:  you  can  get  up  in  the  morning  and 
guess  how  far  you  have  come,  by  noting  what  degree 
of  grace  and  picturesqueness  is  by  that  time  lacking 
in  the  costumes  of  the  new  passengers — I  do  not 
mean  of  the  women  alone,  but  of  both  sexes.  It  may 
be  that  carriage  is  at  the  bottom  of  this  thing;  and 
I  think  it  is ;  for  there  are  plenty  of  ladies  and  gentle- 
men in  the  provincial  cities  whose  garments  are  all 
made  by  the  best  tailors  and  dressmakers  of  New 
York;  yet  this  has  no  perceptible  effect  upon  the 
grand  fact:  the  educated  eye  never  mistakes  those 
people  for  New-Yorkers.  No,  there  is  a  godless 
grace  and  snap  and  style  about  a  born  and  bred 
New-Yorker  which  mere  clothing  cannot  effect. 

April  19. — This  morning  struck  into  the  region  of  full  goatees 
— sometimes  accompanied  by  a  mustache,  but  only  occasionally. 

It  was  odd  to  come  upon  this  thick  crop  of  an 
obsolete  and  uncomely  fashion;  it  was  like  running 
187 


MARK    TWAIN 

suddenly  across  a  forgotten  acquaintance*  whom  you 
had  supposed  dead  for  a  generation.  The  goatee  ex- 
tends over  a  wide  extent  of  country,  and  is  accom- 
panied by  an  iron-clad  belief  in  Adam,  and  the 
biblical  history  of  creation,  which  has  not  suffered 
from  the  assaults  of  the  scientists. 

Afternoon. — At  the  railway  -  stations  the  loafers  carry  both 
hands  in  their  breeches  pockets;  it  was  observable,  heretofore, 
that  one  hand  was  sometimes  out-of-doors — here,  never.  This 
is  an  important  fact  in  geography. 

If  the  loafers  determined  the  character  of  a  coun- 
try, it  would  be  still  more  important,  of  course. 

Heretofore,  all  along,  the  station  loafer  has  been  often 
observed  to  scratch  one  shin  with  the  other  foot;  here  these 
remains  of  activity  are  wanting.  This  has  an  ominous  look. 

By  and  by  we  entered  the  tobacco-chewing  region. 
Fifty  years  ago  the  tobacco-chewing  region  covered 
the  Union.  It  is  greatly  restricted  now. 

Next,  boots  began  to  appear.  Not  in  strong  force, 
however.  Later — away  down  the  Mississippi — they 
became  the  rule.  They  disappeared  from  other 
sections  of  the  Union  with  the  mud;  no  doubt  they 
will  disappear  from  the  river  villages,  also,  when 
proper  pavements  come  in. 

We  reached  St.  Louis  at  ten  o'clock  at  night.  At 
the  counter  of  the  hotel  I  tendered  a  hurriedly  in- 
vented fictitious  name,  with  a  miserable  attempt 
at  careless  ease.  The  clerk  paused,  and  inspected 
me  in  the  compassionate  way  in  which  one  inspects  a 
respectable  person  who  is  found  in  doubtful  circum- 
stances; then  he  said: 

188 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

"It's  all  right;  I  know  what  sort  of  a  room  you 
want.  Used  to  clerk  at  the  St.  James,  in  New  York." 

An  unpromising  beginning  for  a  fraudulent  career! 
We  started  to  the  supper-room,  and  met  two  other 
men  whom  I  had  known  elsewhere.  How  odd  and 
unfair  it  is:  wicked  impostors  go  around  lecturing 
under  my  nom  de  guerre,  and  nobody  suspects  them; 
but  when  an  honest  man  attempts  an  imposture,  he 
is  exposed  at  once. 

One  thing  seemed  plain:  we  must  start  down  the 
river  the  next  day,  if  people  who  could  not  be  de- 
ceived were  going  to  crop  up  at  this  rate:  an  un- 
palatable disappointment,  for  we  had  hoped  to  have 
a  week  in  St.  Louis.  The  Southern  was  a  good  hotel, 
and  we  could  have  had  a  comfortable  time  there. 
It  is  large  and  well  conducted,  and  its  decorations 
do  not  make  one  cry,  as  do  those  of  the  vast  Palmer 
House,  in  Chicago.  True,  the  billiard-tables  were 
of  the  Old  Silurian  Period,  and  the  cues  and  balls  of 
the  Post-Pliocene ;  but  there  was  refreshment  in  this, 
not  discomfort ;  for  there  are  rest  and  healing  in  the 
contemplation  of  antiquities. 

The  most  notable  absence  observable  in  the  bil- 
liard-room was  the  absence  of  the  river-man.  If  he 
was  there,  he  had  taken  in  his  sign;  he  was  in  dis- 
guise. I  saw  there  none  of  the  swell  airs  and  graces, 
and  ostentatious  displays  of  money,  and  pompous 
squanderings  of  it,  which  used  to  distinguish  the 
steamboat  crowd  from  the  dry-land  crowd  in  the 
bygone  days,  in  the  thronged  billiard-rooms  of  St. 
Louis.  In  those  times  the  principal  saloons  were 
always  populous  with  river-men;  given  fifty  players 
189 


MARK    TWAIN 

present,  thirty  or  thirty-five  were  likely  to  be  from 
the  river.  But  I  suspected  that  the  ranks  were  thin 
now,  and  the  steamboatmen  no  longer  an  aristocracy. 
Why,  in  my  time  they  used  to  call  the  "barkeep" 
Bill,  or  Joe,  or  Tom,  and  slap  him  on  the  shoulder;  I 
watched  for  that.  But  none  of  these  people  did  it. 
Manifestly,  a  glory  that  once  was  had  dissolved  and 
vanished  away  in  these  twenty-one  years. 

When  I  went  up  to  my  room  I  found  there  the 
young  man  called  Rogers,  crying.  Rogers  was  not 
his  name;  neither  was  Jones,  Brown,  Dexter,  Fergu- 
son, Bascom,  nor  Thompson;  but  he  answered  to 
either  of  these  that  a  body  found  handy  in  an 
emergency;  or  to  any  other  name,  in  fact,  if  he  per- 
ceived that  you  meant  him.  He  said: 

"What  is  a  person  to  do  here  when  he  wants  a 
drink  of  water?  drink  this  slush?" 

"Can't  you  drink  it?" 

' ' I  could  if  I  had  some  other  water  to  wash  it  with." 

Here  was  a  thing  which  had  not  changed ;  a  score  of 
years  had  not  affected  this  water's  mulatto  complex- 
ion in  the  least ;  a  score  of  centuries  would  succeed  no 
better,  perhaps.  It  comes  out  of  the  turbulent,  bank- 
caving  Missouri,  and  every  tumblerful  of  it  holds 
nearly  an  acre  of  land  in  solution.  I  got  this  fact 
from  the  bishop  of  the  diocese.  If  you  will  let  your 
glass  stand  half  an  hour,  you  can  separate  the  land 
from  the  water  as  easy  as  Genesis ;  and  then  you  will 
find  them  both  good :  the  one  good  to  eat,  the  other 
good  to  drink.  The  land  is  very  nourishing,  the  water 
is  thoroughly  wholesome.  The  one  appeases  hunger; 
the  other,  thirst.  But  the  natives  do  not  take  them 
190 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

separately,  but  together,  as  nature  mixed  them. 
When  they  find  an  inch  of  mud  in  the  bottom  of  a 
glass,  they  stir  it  up,  and  then  take  the  draught  as 
they  would  gruel.  It  is  difficult  for  a  stranger  to  get 
used  to  this  batter,  but  once  used  to  it  he  will  prefer 
it  to  water.  This  is  really  the  case.  It  is  good  for 
steamboating,  and  good  to  drink;  but  it  is  worthless 
for  all  other  purposes,  except  baptizing. 

Next  morning  we  drove  around  town  in  the  rain. 
The  city  seemed  but  little  changed.  It  was  greatly 
changed,  but  it  did  not  seem  so;  because  in  St. 
Louis,  as  in  London  and  Pittsburg,  you  can't  per- 
suade a  new  thing  to  look  new;  the  coal-smoke  turns 
it  into  an  antiquity  the  moment  you  take  your  hand 
off  it.  The  place  had  just  about  doubled  its  size 
since  I  was  a  resident  of  it,  and  was  now  become  a 
city  of  four  hundred  thousand  inhabitants;  still,  in 
the  solid  business  parts,  it  looked  about  as  it  had 
looked  formerly.  Yet  I  am  sure  there  is  not  as  much 
smoke  in  St.  Louis  now  as  there  used  to  be.  The 
smoke  used  to  bank  itself  in  a  dense  billowy  black 
canopy  over  the  town,  and  hide  the  sky  from  view. 
This  shelter  is  very  much  thinner  now;  still,  there 
is  a  sufficiency  of  smoke  there,  I  think.  I  heard  no 
complaint. 

However,  on  the  outskirts  changes  were  apparent 
enough;  notably  in  dwelling-house  architecture. 
The  fine  new  homes  are  noble  and  beautiful  and 
modern.  They  stand  by  themselves,  too,  with  green 
lawns  around  them;  whereas  the  dwellings  of  a 
former  day  are  packed  together  in  blocks,  and  are  all 
of  one  pattern,  with  windows  all  alike,  set  in  an 
191 


MARK     TWAIN 

arched  framework  of  twisted  stone;  a  sort  of  house 
which  was  handsome  enough  when  it  was  rarer. 

There  was  another  change — the  Forest  Park.  This 
was  new  to  me.  It  is  beautiful  and  very  extensive, 
and  has  the  excellent  merit  of  having  been  made 
mainly  by  nature.  There  are  other  parks,  and  fine 
ones,  notably  Tower  Grove  and  the  Botanical  Gar- 
dens ;  for  St.  Louis  interested  herself  in  such  improve- 
ments at  an  earlier  day  than  did  the  most  of  our  cities. 

The  first  time  I  ever  saw  St.  Louis  I  could  have 
bought  it  for  six  million  dollars,  and  it  was  the  mis- 
take of  my  life  that  I  did  not  do  it.  It  was  bitter  now 
to  look  abroad  over  this  domed  and  steepled  metropo- 
lis, this  solid  expanse  of  bricks  and  mortar  stretching 
away  on  every  hand  into  dim,  measure-defying  dis- 
tances, and  remember  that  I  had  allowed  that  oppor- 
tunity to  go  by.  Why  I  should  have  allowed  it  to  go 
by  seems,  of  course,  foolish  and  inexplicable  to-day, 
at  a  first  glance;  yet  there  were  reasons  at  the  time 
to  justify  this  course. 

A  Scotchman,  Hon.  Charles  Augustus  Murray, 
writing  some  forty-five  or  fifty  years  ago,  said :  ' '  The 
streets  are  narrow,  ill-paved,  and  ill-lighted."  Those 
streets  are  narrow  still,  of  course;  many  of  them  are 
ill-paved  yet ;  but  the  reproach  of  ill-lighting  cannot 
be  repeated  now.  The  "Catholic  New  Church "  was 
the  only  notable  building  then,  and  Mr.  Murray  was 
confidently  called  upon  to  admire  it,  with  its  "species 
of  Grecian  portico,  surmounted  by  a  kind  of  steeple, 
much  too  diminutive  in  its  proportions,  and  sur- 
mounted by  sundry  ornaments"  which  the  unimagi- 
native Scotchman  found  himself  ' '  quite  unable  to  de- 
192 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

scribe";  and  therefore  was  grateful  when  a  German 
tourist  helped  him  out  with  the  exclamation:  "By 

,  they  look  exactly  like  bed-posts !"  St.  Louis  is 

well  equipped  with  stately  and  noble  public  buildings 
now,  and  the  little  church,  which  the  people  used  to 
be  so  proud  of,  lost  its  importance  a  long  time  ago. 
Still,  this  would  not  surprise  Mr.  Murray,  if  he  could 
come  back;  for  he  prophesied  the  coming  greatness 
of  St.  Louis  with  strong  confidence. 

The  further  we  drove  in  our  inspection  tour,  the 
more  sensibly  I  realized  how  the  city  had  grown  since 
I  had  seen  it  last ;  changes  in  detail  became  steadily 
more  apparent  and  frequent  than  at  first,  too :  changes 
uniformly  evidencing  progress,  energy,  prosperity.* 

But  the  change  of  changes  was  on  the  "levee." 
This  time,  a  departure  from  the  rule.  Half  a  dozen 
sound-asleep  steamboats  where  I  used  to  see  a  solid 
mile  of  wide-awake  ones !  This  was  melancholy,  this 
was  woeful.  The  absence  of  the  pervading  and  jocund 
steamboatman  from  the  billiard-saloon  was  ex- 
plained. He  was  absent  because  he  is  no  more. 
His  occupation  is  gone,  his  power  has  passed  away, 
he  is  absorbed  into  the  common  herd;  he  grinds  at 
the  mill,  a  shorn  Samson  and  inconspicuous.  Half  a 
dozen  lifeless  steamboats,  a  mile  of  empty  wharves,  a 
negro,  fatigued  with  whisky,  stretched  asleep  in  a  wide 
and  soundless  vacancy,  where  the  serried  hosts  of 
commerce  used  to  contend!1  Here  was  desolation 
indeed. 

1  Captain  Marryat,  writing  forty-five  years  ago,  says:  "St.  Louis 
has  20,000  inhabitants.     The  river  abreast  of  the  town  is  crowded  with 
steamboats,  lying  in  two  or  three  tiers." 
13  193 


MARK    TWAIN 

"The  old,  old  sea,  as  one  in  tears, 

Comes  murmuring,  with  foamy  lips, 
And  knocking  at  the  vacant  piers, 

Calls  for  his  long-lost  multitude  of  ships." 

The  towboat  and  the  railroad  had  done  their  work, 
and  done  it  well  and  completely.  The  mighty 
bridge,  stretching  along  over  our  heads,  had  done  its 
share  in  the  slaughter  and  spoliation.  Remains  of 
former  steamboatmen  told  me,-with  wan  satisfaction, 
that  the  bridge  doesn't  pay.  Still,  it  can  be  no  suf- 
ficient compensation  to  a  corpse  to  know  that  the 
dynamite  that  laid  him  out  was  not  of  as  good  quality 
as  it  had  been  supposed  to  be. 

The  pavements  along  the  river-front  were  bad ;  the 
sidewalks  were  rather  out  of  repair ;  there  was  a  rich 
abundance  of  mud.  All  this  was  familiar  and  satis- 
fying; but  the  ancient  armies  of  drays,  and  struggling 
throngs  of  men,  and  mountains  of  freight,  were  gone ; 
and  Sabbath  reigned  in  their  stead.  The  immemo- 
rial mile  of  cheap,  foul  doggeries  remained,  but  busi- 
ness was  dull  with  them;  the  multitudes  of  poison- 
swilling  Irishmen  had  departed,  and  in  their  places 
were  a  few  scattering  handfuls  of  ragged  negroes, 
some  drinking,  some  drunk,  some  nodding,  others 
asleep.  St.  Louis  is  a  great  and  prosperous  and  ad- 
vancing city;  but  the  river-edge  of  it  seems  dead  past 
resurrection. 

Mississippi  steamboating  was  born  about  1812 ;  at 
the  end  of  thirty  years  it  had  grown  to  mighty  pro- 
portions ;  and  in  less  than  thirty  more  it  was  dead !  A 
strangely  short  life  for  so  majestic  a  creature.  Of 
course  it  is  not  absolutely  dead ;  neither  is  a  crippled 
194 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

octogenarian  who  could  once  jump  twenty-two  feet 
on  level  ground ;  but  as  contrasted  with  what  it  was 
in  its  prime  vigor,  Mississippi  steamboating  may  be 
called  dead. 

It  killed  the  old-fashioned  keel-boating,  by  reduc- 
ing the  freight  trip  to  New  Orleans  to  less  than  a 
week.  The  railroads  have  killed  the  steamboat  pas- 
senger traffic  by  doing  in  two  or  three  days  what  the 
steamboats  consumed  a  week  in  doing :  and  the  tow- 
ing fleets  have  killed  the  through-freight  traffic  by 
dragging  six  or  seven  steamer-loads  of  stuff  down  the 
river  at  a  time,  at  an  expense  so  trivial  that  steam- 
boat competition  was  out  of  the  question. 

Freight  and  passenger  way  traffic  remains  to  the 
steamers.  This  is  in  the  hands — along  the  two  thou- 
sand miles  of  river  between  St.  Paul  and  New  Or- 
leans— of  two  or  three  close  corporations  well  for- 
tified with  capital;  and  by  able  and  thoroughly 
businesslike  management  and  system,  these  make  a 
sufficiency  of  money  out  of  what  is  left  of  the  once 
prodigious  steamboating  industry.  I  suppose  that 
St.  Louis  and  New  Orleans  have  not  suffered  materi- 
ally by  the  change,  but  alas  for  the  wood-yard  man! 

He  used  to  fringe  the  river  all  the  way;  his  close- 
ranked  merchandise  stretched  from  the  one  city  to, 
the  other,  along  the  banks,  and  he  sold  uncountable 
cords  of  it  every  year  for  cash  on  the  nail ;  but  all  the 
scattering  boats  that  are  left  burn  coal  now,  and  the 
seldomest  spectacle  on  the  Mississippi  to-day  is  a 
wood-pile.  Where  now  is  the  once  wood-yard  man? , 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

TRAVELING   INCOGNITO 

MY  idea  was  to  tarry  awhile  in  every  town  be- 
tween St.  Louis  and  New  Orleans.  To  do  this, 
it  would  be  necessary  to  go  from  place  to  place 
by  the  short  packet  lines.  It  was  an  easy  plan  to 
make,  and  would  have  been  an  easy  one  to  follow, 
twenty  years  ago — but  not  now.  There  are  wide 
intervals  between  boats,  these  days. 

I  wanted  to  begin  with  the  interesting  old  French 
settlements  of  St.  Genevieve  and  Kaskaskia,  sixty 
miles  below  St.  Louis.  There  was  only  one  boat 
advertised  for  that  section — a  Grand  Tower  packet. 
Still,  one  boat  was  enough;  so  we  went  down  to  look 
at  her.  She  was  a  venerable  rack-heap,  and  a  fraud 
to  boot;  for  she  was  playing  herself  for  personal 
property,  whereas  the  good  honest  dirt  was  so  thickly 
caked  all  over  her  that  she  was  righteously  taxable 
as  real  estate.  There  are  places  in  New  England 
where  her  hurricane-deck  would  be  worth  a  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars  an  acre.  The  soil  on  her  forecastle 
was  quite  good — the  new  crop  of  wheat  was  already 
springing  from  the  cracks  in  protected  places.  The 
companionway  was  of  a  dry  sandy  character,  and 
would  have  been  well  suited  for  grapes,  with  a 
southern  exposure  and  a  little  subsoiling.  The  soil 
196 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

of  the  boiler-deck  was  thin  and  rocky,  but  good 
enough  for  grazing  purposes.  A  colored  boy  was  on 
watch  here — nobody  else  visible.  We  gathered  from 
him  that  this  calm  craft  would  go  as  advertised,  "if 
she  got  her  trip";  if  she  didn't  get  it,  she  would 
wait  for  it. 

"Has  she  got  any  of  her  trip?" 

"Bless  you,  no,  boss!  She  ain't  unloadened,  yit. 
She  only  come  in  dis  mawnin'." 

He  was  uncertain  as  to  when  she  might  get  her 
trip,  but  thought  it  might  be  to-morrow  or  maybe 
next  day.  This  would  not  answer  at  all;  so  we  had 
to  give  up  the  novelty  of  sailing  down  the  river  on  a 
farm.  We  had  one  more  arrow  in  our  quiver:  a 
Vicksburg  packet,  the  Gold  Dust,  was  to  leave  at 
5  P.M.  We  took  passage  in  her  for  Memphis,  and 
gave  up  the  idea  of  stopping  off  here  and  there,  as 
being  impracticable.  She  was  neat,  clean,  and  com- 
fortable. We  camped  on  the  boiler-deck,  and  bought 
some  cheap  literature  to  kill  time  with.  The  vender 
was  a  venerable  Irishman  with  a  benevolent  face  and 
a  tongue  that  worked  easily  in  the  socket,  and  from 
him  we  learned  that  he  had  lived  in  St.  Louis  thirty- 
four  years  and  had  never  been  across  the  river  during 
that  period.  Then  he  wandered  into  a  very  flowing 
lecture,  filled  with  classic  names  and  allusions,  which 
was  quite  wonderful  for  fluency  until  the  fact  became 
rather  apparent  that  this  was  not  the  first  time,  nor 
perhaps  the  fiftieth,  that  the  speech  had  been  de- 
livered. He  was  a  good  deal  of  a  character,  and 
much  better  company  than  the  sappy  literature  hej 
was  selling.  A  random  remark,  connecting  Irishmen ; 
197 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  beer,  brought  this  nugget  of  information  out 
of  him : 

"They  don't  drink  it,  sir.  They  can't  drink  it, 
sir.  Give  an  Irishman  lager  for  a  month,  and  he's 
a  dead  man.  An  Irishman  is  lined  with  copper,  and 
the  beer  corrodes  it.  But  whisky  polishes  the  copper 
and  is  the  saving  of  him,  sir." 

At  eight  o'clock,  promptly,  we  backed  out  and — 
crossed  the  river.  As  we  crept  toward  the  shore,  in 
the  thick  darkness,  a  blinding  glory  of  white  electric 
light  burst  suddenly  from  our  forecastle,  and  lit  up 
the  water  and  the  warehouses  as  with  a  noonday 
glare.  Another  big  change,  this — no  more  flickering, 
smoky,  pitch  -  dripping,  ineffectual  torch  -  baskets, 
now:  their  day  is  past.  Next,  instead  of  calling  out 
a  score  of  hands  to  man  the  stage,  a  couple  of  men 
and  a  hatful  of  steam  lowered  it  from  the  derrick 
where  it  was  suspended,  launched  it,  deposited  it  in 
just  the  right  spot,  and  the  whole  thing  was  over  and 
done  with  before  a  mate  in  the  olden  time  could  have 
got  his  profanity-mill  adjusted  to  begin  the  prepara- 
tory services.  Why  this  new  and  simple  method  of 
handling  the  stages  was  not  thought  of  when  the 
first  steamboat  was  built  is  a  mystery  which  helps 
one  to  realize  what  a  dull-witted  slug  the  average 
human  being  is. 

We  finally  got  away  at  two  in  the  morning,  and 
when  I  turned  out  at  six  we  were  rounding  to  at  a 
rocky  point  where  there  was  an  old  stone  warehouse 
— at  any  rate,  the  ruins  of  it;  two  or  three  decayed 
dwelling-houses  were  near  by  in  the  shelter  of  the 
leafy  hills,  but  there  were  no  evidences  of  human  or 
198 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

other  animal  life  to  be  seen.  I  wondered  if  I  had 
forgotten  the  river,  for  I  had  no  recollection  whatever 
of  this  place;  the  shape  of  the  river,  too,  was  un- 
familiar; there  was  nothing  in  sight  anywhere  that 
I  could  remember  ever  having  seen  before.  I  was 
surprised,  disappointed,  and  annoyed. 

We  put  ashore  a  well-dressed  lady  and  gentleman, 
and  two  well-dressed  ladylike  young  girls,  together 
with  sundry  Russia-leather  bags.  A  strange  place 
for  such  folk !  No  carriage  was  waiting.  The  party 
moved  off  as  if  they  had  not  expected  any,  and 
struck  down  a  winding  country  road  afoot. 

But  the  mystery  was  explained  when  we  got  under 
way  again,  for  these  people  were  evidently  bound 
for  a  large  town  which  lay  shut  in  behind  a  tow-head 
(i.  e.,  new  island)  a  couple  of  miles  below  this  landing. 
I  couldn't  remember  that  town;  I  couldn't  place  it, 
couldn't  call  its  name.  So  I  lost  part  of  my  temper. 
I  suspected  that  it  might  be  St.  Genevieve — and  so 
it  proved  to  be.  Observe  what  this  eccentric  river 
had  been  about:  it  had  built  up  this  huge,  useless 
tow-head  directly  in  front  of  this  town,  cut  off  its 
river  communications,  fenced  it  away  completely, 
and  made  a  "country"  town  of  it.  It  is  a  fine  old 
place,  too,  and  deserved  a  better  fate.  It  was  settled 
by  the  French,  and  is  a  relic  of  a  time  when  one 
could  travel  from  the  mouths  of  the  Mississippi  to 
Quebec  and  be  on  French  territory  and  under  French 
rule  all  the  way. 

Presently  I  ascended  to  the  hurricane-deck  and 
cast  a  longing  glance  toward  the  pilot-house. 
199 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

MY   INCOGNITO   IS   EXPLODED 

ATER  a  close  study  of  the  face  of  the  pilot  on 
watch,  I  was  satisfied  that  I  had  never  seen  him 
before,  so  I  went  up  there.  The  pilot  inspected  me; 
I  reinspected  the  pilot.  These  customary  prelimi- 
naries over,  I  sat  down  on  the  high  bench,  and  he 
faced  about  and  went  on  with  his  work.  Every  de- 
tail of  the  pilot-house  was  familiar  to  me,  with  one 
exception — a  large-mouthed  tube  under  the  breast- 
board.  I  puzzled  over  that  thing  a  considerable 
time;  then  gave  up  and  asked  what  it  was  for. 

"To  hear  the  engine-bells  through." 

It  was  another  good  contrivance  which  ought  to 
have  been  invented  half  a  century  sooner.  So  I  was 
thinking  when  the  pilot  asked : 

"Do  you  know  what  this  rope  is  for?" 

I  managed  to  get  around  this  question  without 
committing  myself. 

"Is  this  the  first  time  you  were  ever  in  a  pilot- 
house?" 

I  crept  under  that  one. 

"Where  are  you  from?" 

"New  England." 

"First  time  you  have  ever  been  West?" 

I  climbed  over  this  one. 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

"If  you  take  an  interest  in  such  things,  I  can  tell 
you  what  all  these  things  are  for." 

I  said  I  should  like  it. 

"This,"  putting  his  hand  on  a  backing-bell  rope, 
"is  to  sound  the  fire-alarm;  this,"  putting  his  hand 
on  a  go-ahead  bell,  "is  to  call  the  texas- tender;  this 
one,"  indicating  the  whistle-lever,  "is  to  call  the 
captain" — and  so  he  went  on,  touching  one  object 
after  another  and  reeling  off  his  tranquil  spool  of  lies. 

I  had  never  felt  so  like  a  passenger  before.  I 
thanked  him,  with  emotion,  for  each  new  fact,  and 
wrote  it  down  in  my  note-book.  The  pilot  warmed 
to  his  opportunity,  and  proceeded  to  load  me  up  in 
the  good  old-fashioned  way.  At  times  I  was  afraid 
he  was  going  to  rupture  his  invention ;  but  it  always 
stood  the  strain,  and  he  pulled  through  all  right. 
He  drifted,  by  easy  stages,  into  revealments  of  the 
river's  marvelous  eccentricities  of  one  sort  and  an- 
other, and  backed  them  up  with  some  pretty  gigantic 
illustrations.  For  instance : 

' '  Do  you  see  that  little  boulder  sticking  out  of  the 
water  yonder?  Well,  when  I  first  came  on  the  river, 
that  was  a  solid  ridge  of  rock,  over  sixty  feet  high 
and  two  miles  long.  All  washed  away  but  that." 
[This  with  a  sigh.] 

I  had  a  mighty  impulse  to  destroy  him,  but  it 
seemed  to  me  that  killing,  in  any  ordinary  way, 
would  be  too  good  for  him. 

Once,  when  an  odd-looking  craft,  with  a  vast  coal- 
scuttle slanting  aloft  on  the  end  of  a  beam,  was 
steaming  by  in  the  distance,  he  indifferently  drew 
attention  to  it,  as  one  might  to  an  object  grown 
201 


MARK    TWAIN 

wearisome  through  familiarity,  and  observed  that  it 
was  an  "alligator-boat." ' 

' ' An  alligator-boat  ?     What's  it  f or  ?' ' 
"To  dredge  out  alligators  with." 
"Are  they  so  thick  as  to  be  troublesome?" 
"Well,  not  now,  because  the  government  keeps 
them  down.     But  they  used  to  be.     Not  everywhere ; 
but  in  favorite  places,  here  and  there,  where  the 
river  is  wide  and  shoal — like  Plum  Point,  and  Stack 
Island,  and  so  on — places  they  call  alligator-beds." 
"Did  they  actually  impede  navigation?" 
"Years,  ago,  yes,  in  very  low  water;  there  was 
hardly  a  trip,  then,  that  we  didn't  get  aground  on 
alligators." 

It  seemed  to  me  that  I  should  certainly  have  to 
get  out  my  tomahawk.  However,  I  restrained  my- 
self and  said: 

"It  must  have  been  dreadful." 
"Yes,  it  was  one  df  the  main  difficulties  about 
piloting.     It  was  so  hard  to  tell  anything  about  the 

water;  the  d d  things  shift  around  so — never  lie 

still  five  minutes  at  a  time.  You  can  tell  a  wind- 
reef,  straight  off,  by  the  look  of  it;  you  can  tell  a 
break;  you  can  tell  a  sand-reef — that's  all  easy;  but 
an  alligator-reef  doesn't  show  up,  worth  anything. 
Nine  times  in  ten  you  can't  tell  where  the  water  is ; 
and  when  you  do  see  where  it  is,  like  as  not  it  ain't 
there  when  you  get  there,  the  devils  have  swapped 
around  so,  meantime.  Of  course  there  were  some 
few  pilots  that  could  judge  of  alligator- water  nearly 
as  well  as  they  could  of  any  other  kind,  but  they  had 
to  have  natural  talent  for  it ;  it  wasn't  a  thing  a  body 


LIFE     ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

could  learn,  you  had  to  be  born  with  it.  Let  me  see : 
There  was  Ben  Thornburg,  and  Beck  Jolly,  and 
Squire  Bell,  and  Horace  Bixby,  and  Major  Downing, 
and  John  Stevenson,  and  Billy  Gordon,  and  Jim 
Brady,  and  George  Ealer,  and  Billy  Youngblood — 
all  A  i  alligator-pilots.  They  could  tell  alligator- 
water  as  far  as  another  Christian  could  tell  whisky. 
Read  it  ?  Ah,  couldn't  they,  though !  I  only  wish  I 
had  as  many  dollars  as  they  could  read  alligator- 
water  a  mile  and  a  half  off.  Yes,  and  it  paid  them 
to  do  it,  too.  A  good  alligator-pilot  could  always  get 
fifteen  hundred  dollars  a  month.  Nights,  other 
people  had  to  lay  up  for  alligators,  but  those  fellows 
never  laid  up  for  alligators;  they  never  laid  up  for 
anything  but  fog.  They  could  smell  the  best  alli- 
gator-water— so  it  was  said.  I  don't  know  whether 
it  was  so  or  not,  and  I  think  a  body's  got  his  hands 
full  enough  if  he  sticks  to  just  what  he  knows  him- 
self, without  going  around  backing  up  other  people's 
say-so's,  though  there's  a  plenty  that  ain't  backward 
about  doing  it,  as  long  as  they  can  roust  out  some- 
thing wonderful  to  tell.  Which  is  not  the  style  of 
Robert  Styles,  by  as  much  as  three  fathom — maybe 
quarter-less.'' 

[My!  Was  this  Rob  Styles?  This  mustached  and 
stately  figure?  A  slim  enough  cub,  in  my  time. 
How  he  has  improved  in  comeliness  in  five-and- 
twenty  years — and  in  the  noble  art  of  inflating  his 
facts.]  After  these  musings,  I  said  aloud: 

"I  should  think  that  dredging  out  the  alligators 
wouldn't  have  done  much  good,  because  they  could 
come  back  again  right  away." 
203 


MARK    TWAIN 

"If  you  had  had  as  much  experience  of  alligators  as 
I  have,  you  wouldn't  talk  like  that.  You  dredge 
an  alligator  once  and  he's  convinced.  It's  the  last 
you  hear  of  him.  He  wouldn't  come  back  for  pie. 
If  there's  one  thing  that  an  alligator  is  more  down  on 
than  another,  it's  being  dredged.  Besides,  they  were 
not  simply  shoved  out  of  the  way;  the  most  of  the 
scoopful  were  scooped  aboard;  they  emptied  them 
into  the  hold;  and  when  they  had  got  a  trip,  they 
took  them  to  Orleans  to  the  government  works." 

"What  for?" 

"Why,  to  make  soldier-shoes  out  of  their  hides. 
All  the  government  shoes  are  made  of  alligator-hide. 
It  makes  the  best  shoes  in  the  world.  They  last  five 
years,  and  they  won't  absorb  water.  The  alligator 
fishery  is  a  government  monopoly.  All  the  alli- 
gators are  government  property — just  like  the  live- 
oaks.  You  cut  down  a  live-oak,  and  government 
fines  you  fifty  dollars;  you  kill  an  alligator,  and  up 
you  go  for  misprision  of  treason — lucky  duck  if  they 
don't  hang  you,  too.  And  they  will,  if  you're  a 
Democrat.  The  buzzard  is  the  sacred  bird  of  the 
South,  and  you  can't  touch  him ;  the  alligator  is  the 
sacred  bird  of  the  government,  and  you've  got  to  let 
him  alone." 

"Do  you  ever  get  aground  on  the  alligators  now?" 

"Oh,  no!  it  hasn't  happened  for  years." 

"Well,  then,  why  do  they  still  keep  the  alligator- 
boats  in  service?" 

"Just  for  police  duty — nothing  more.  They 
merely  go  up  and  down  now  and  then.  The  present 
generation  of  alligators  know  them  as  easy  as  a 
204 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

burglar  knows  a  roundsman;  when  they  see  one 
coming,  they  break  camp  and  go  for  the  woods." 

After  rounding  out  and  finishing  up  and  polishing 
off  the  alligator  business,  he  dropped  easily  and  com- 
fortably into  the  historical  vein,  and  told  of  some 
tremendous  feats  of  half  a  dozen  old-time  steamboats 
of  his  acquaintance,  dwelling  at  special  length  upon  a 
certain  extraordinary  performance  of  his  chief  favor- 
ite among  this  distinguished  fleet — and  then  adding : 

"That  boat  was  the  Cyclone — last  trip  she  ever 
made — she  sunk,  that  very  trip;  captain  was  Tom 
Ballou,  the  most  immortal  liar  that  ever  I  struck. 
He  couldn't  ever  seem  to  tell  the  truth,  in  any  kind 
of  weather.  Why,  he  would  make  you  fairly  shud- 
der. He  was  the  most  scandalous  liar!  I  left  him, 
finally;  I  couldn't  stand  it.  The  proverb  says,  'like 
master,  like  man ' ;  and  if  you  stay  with  that  kind  of 
a  man,  you'll  come  under  suspicion  by  and  by,  just 
as  sure  as  you  live.  He  paid  first-class  wages;  but 
said  I,  'What's  wages  when  your  reputation's  in 
danger?'  So  I  let  the  wages  go,  and  froze  to  my 
reputation.  And  I've  never  regretted  it.  Reputa- 
tion's worth  everything,  ain't  it?  That's  the  way 
I  look  at  it.  He  had  more  selfish  organs  than  any 
seven  men  in  the  world — all  packed  in  the  stern- 
sheets  of  his  skull,  of  course,  where  they  belonged. 
They  weighed  down  the  back  of  his  head  so  that  it 
made  his  nose  tilt  up  in  the  air.  People  thought  it 
was  vanity,  but  it  wasn't,  it  was  malice.  If  you  only 
saw  his  foot,  you'd  take  him  to  be  nineteen  feet  high, 
but  he  wasn't;  it  was  because  his  foot  was  out  of 
drawing.  He  was  intended  to  be  nineteen  feet  high, 
205 


MARK     TWAIN 

no  doubt,  if  his  foot  was  made  first,  but  he  didn't 
get  there;  he  was  only  five  feet  ten.  That's  what  he 
was,  and  that's  what  he  is.  You  take  the  lies  out  of 
him,  and  he'll  shrink  to  the  size  of  your  hat;  you  take 
the  malice  out  of  him,  and  he'll  disappear.  That 
Cyclone  was  a  rattler  to  go,  and  the  sweetest  thing  to 
steer  that  ever  walked  the  waters.  Set  her  amid- 
ships, in  a  big  river,  and  just  let  her  go;  it  was  all 
you  had  to  do.  She  would  hold  herself  on  a  star 
all  night,  if  you  let  her  alone.  You  couldn't  ever 
feel  her  rudder.  It  wasn't  any  more  labor  to  steer 
her  than  it  is  to  count  the  Republican  vote  in  a  South 
Carolina  election.  One  morning,  just  at  daybreak, 
the  last  trip  she  ever  made,  they  took  her  rudder 
aboard  to  mend  it ;  I  didn't  know  anything  about  it ; 
I  backed  her  out  from  the  wood-yard  and  went 
a-weaving  down  the  river  all  serene.  When  I  had 
gone  about  twenty-three  miles,  and  made  four  hor- 
ribly crooked  crossings — " 

"Without  any  rudder?" 

"Yes — old  Captain  Tom  appeared  on  the  roof 
and  began  to  find  fault  with  me  for  running  such  a 
dark  night — " 

' '  Such  a  dark  night  ?    Why,  you  said — ' ' 

"Never  mind  what  I  said — 'twas  as  dark  as 
Egypt  now,  though  pretty  soon  the  moon  began  to 
rise,  and — " 

"You  mean  the  sun — because  you  started  out  just 
at  break  of — look  here !  Was  this  before  you  quitted 
the  captain  on  account  of  his  lying,  or — " 

"It  was  before — oh,  a  long  time  before.  And  as 
I  was  saying,  he — " 

206 


LIFE     ON     THE  'MISSISSIPPI 

"But  was  this  the  trip  she  sunk,  or  was — " 

' '  Oh,  no !  months  afterward.  And  so  the  old  man, 
he—" 

"Then  she  made  two  last  trips,  because  you 
said — " 

He  stepped  back  from  the  wheel,  swabbing  away 
his  perspiration,  and  said: 

"Here!"  (calling  me  by  name)  "you  take  her  and 
lie  awhile — you're  handier  at  it  than  I  am:  Trying 
to  play  yourself  for  a  stranger  and  an  innocent! 
Why,  I  knew  you  before  you  had  spoken  seven 
words ;  and  I  made  up  my  mind  to  find  out  what  was 
your  little  game.  It  was  to  draw  me  out.  Well,  I 
let  you,  didn't  I?  Now  take  the  wheel  and  finish 
the  watch;  and  next  time  play  fair,  and  you  won't 
have  to  work  your  passage." 

Thus  ended  the  fictitious-name  business.  And  not 
six  hours  out  from  St.  Louis!  but  I  had  gained  a 
privilege,  anyway,  for  I  had  been  itching  to  get  my 
hands  on  the  wheel,  from  the  beginning.  I  seemed 
to  have  forgotten  the  river,  but  I  hadn't  forgotten 
how  to  steer  a  steamboat,  nor  how  to  enjoy  it,  either. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

FROM    CAIRO   TO    HICKMAN 

THE  scenery  from  St.  Louis  to  Cairo — two  hun- 
dred miles — is  varied  and  beautiful.  The  hills 
were  clothed  in  the  fresh  foliage  of  spring  now,  and 
wore  a  gracious  and  worthy  setting  for  the  broad 
river  flowing  between.  Our  trip  began  auspiciously, 
with  a  perfect  day,  as  to  breeze  and  sunshine,  and 
our  boat  threw  the  miles  out  behind  her  with  satis- 
factory despatch. 

We  found  a  railway  intruding  at  Chester,  Illinois ; 
Chester  has  also  a  penitentiary  now,  and  is  other- 
wise marching  on.  At  Grand  Tower,  too,  there  was 
a  railway;  and  another  at  Cape  Girardeau.  The 
former  town  gets  its  name  from  a  huge,  squat  pillar 
of  rock,  which  stands  up  out  of  the  water  on  the 
Missouri  side  of  the  river — a  piece  of  nature's  fanci- 
ful handiwork — and  is  one  of  the  most  picturesque 
features  of  the  scenery  of  that  region.  For  nearer 
or  remoter  neighbors,  the  Tower  has  the  Devil's 
Bake-oven — so  called,  perhaps,  because  it  does  not 
powerfully  resemble  anybody  else's  bake-oven;  and 
the  Devil's  Tea-table — this  latter  a  great  smooth- 
surfaced  mass  of  rock,  with  diminishing  wine-glass 
stem,  perched  some  fifty  or  sixty  feet  above  the  river, 
beside  a  beflowered  and  garlanded  precipice,  and 
208 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

sufficiently  like  a  tea-table  to  answer  for  anybody, 
Devil  or  Christian.  Away  down  the  river  we  have 
the  Devil's  Elbow  and  the  Devil's  Race-course,  and 
lots  of  other  property  of  his  which  I  cannot  now  call 
to  mind. 

The  town  of  Grand  Tower  was  evidently  a  busier 
place  than  it  had  been  in  old  times,  but  it  seemed 
to  need  some  repairs  here  and  there,  and  a  new  coat 
of  whitewash  all  over.  Still,  it  was  pleasant  to  me 
to  see  the  old  coat  once  more.  "Uncle"  Mumford, 
our  second  officer,  said  the  place  had  been  suffering 
from  high  water  and  consequently  was  not  looking 
its  best  now.  But  he  said  it  was  not  strange  that 
it  didn't  waste  whitewash  on  itself,  for  more  lime 
was  made  there,  and  of  a  better  quality,  than  any- 
where in  the  West ;  and  added,  "On  a  dairy-farm  you 
never  can  get  any  milk  for  your  coffee,  nor  any  sugar 
for  it  on  a  sugar-plantation;  and  it  is  against  sense 
to  go  to  a  lime-town  to  hunt  for  whitewash."  In  my 
own  experience  I  knew  the  first  two  items  to  be 
true:  and  also  that  people  who  sell  candy  don't  care 
for  candy;  therefore  there  was  plausibility  in  Uncle 
Mumford's  final  observation  that  "people  who  make 
lime  run  more  to  religion  than  whitewash."  Uncle 
Mumford  said,  further,  that  Grand  Tower  was  a 
great  coaling  center  and  a  prospering  place. 

Cape  Girardeau  is  situated  on  a  hillside,  and  makes 
a  handsome  appearance.  There  is  a  great  Jesuit 
school  for  boys  at  the  foot  of  the  town  by  the  river. 
Uncle  Mumford  said  it  had  as  high  a  reputation  for 
thoroughness  as  any  similar  institution  in  Missouri. 
There  was  another  college  higher  up  on  an  airy 
209 


MARK     TWAIN 

summit — a  bright  new  edifice,  picturesquely  and 
peculiarly  towered  and  pinnacled — a  sort  of  gigantic 
casters,  with  the  cruets  all  complete.  Uncle  Mum- 
ford  said  that  Cape  Girardeau  was  the  Athens  of 
Missouri,  and  contained  several  colleges  besides  those 
already  mentioned;  and  all  of  them  on  a  religious 
basis  of  one  kind  or  another.  He  directed  my  atten- 
tion to  what  he  called  the  "strong  and  pervasive 
religious  look  of  the  town,"  but  I  could  not  see  that 
it  looked  more  religious  than  the  other  hill  towns 
with  the  same  slope  and  built  of  the  same  kind  of 
bricks.  Partialities  often  make  people  see  more  than 
really  exists. 

Uncle  Mumford  has  been  thirty  years  a  mate  on 
the  river.  He  is  a  man  of  practical  sense  and  a  level 
head;  has  observed;  has  had  much  experience  of  one 
sort  and  another;  has  opinions;  has,  also,  just  a  per- 
ceptible dash  of  poetry  in  his  composition,  an  easy 
gift  of  speech,  a  thick  growl  in  his  voice,  and  an 
oath  or  two  where  he  can  get  at  them  when  the 
exigencies  of  his  office  require  a  spiritual  lift.  He  is 
a  mate  of  the  blessed  old-time  kind ;  and  goes  gravely 

d ing  around,  when  there  is  work  to  the  fore,  in 

a  way  to  mellow  the  ex-steamboatman's  heart  with 
sweet,  soft  longings  for  the  vanished  days  that  shall 

come  no  more.  "Git  up,  there, you!  Going 

to  be  all  day?  Why  d'n't  you  say  you  was  petrified 
in  your  hind  legs,  before  you  shipped?" 

He  is  a  steady  man  with  his  crew;  kind  and  just, 
but  firm;  so  they  like  him,  and  stay  with  him.  He 
is  still  in  the  slouchy  garb  of  the  old  generation  of 
mates ;  but  next  trip  the  Anchor  Line  will  have  him 


LIFE     ON     THE  .MISSISSIPPI 

in  uniform — a  natty  blue  naval  uniform,  with  brass 
buttons,  along  with  all  the  officers  of  the  line — and 
then  he  will  be  a  totally  different  style  of  scenery 
from  what  he  is  now. 

Uniforms  on  the  Mississippi!  It  beats  all  the 
other  changes  put  together,  for  surprise.  Still,  there 
is  another  surprise — that  it  was  not  made  fifty  years 
ago.  It  is  so  manifestly  sensible  that  it  might  have 
been  thought  of  earlier,  one  would  suppose.  During 
fifty  years,  out  there,  the  innocent  passenger  in  need 
of  help  and  information  has  been  mistaking  the  mate 
for  the  cook,  and  the  captain  for  the  barber — and 
being  roughly  entertained  for  it,  too.  But  his 
troubles  are  ended  now.  And  the  greatly  improved 
aspect  of  the  boat's  staff  is  another  advantage 
achieved  by  the  dress-reform  period. 

Steered  down  the  bend  below  Cape  Girardeau. 
They  used  to  call  it  ' '  Steersman's  Bend ' ' ;  plain  sail- 
ing and  plenty  of  water  in  it,  always ;  about  the  only 
place  in  the  Upper  River  that  a  new  cub  was  allowed 
to  take  a  boat  through,  in  low  water. 

Thebes,  at  the  head  of  the  Grand  Chain,  and 
Commerce  at  the  foot  of  it,  were  towns  easily  remem- 
berable,  as  they  had  not  undergone  conspicuous 
alteration.  Nor  the  Chain,  either — in  the  nature  of 
things;  for  it  is  a  chain  of  sunken  rocks  admirably 
arranged  to  capture  and  kill  steamboats  on  bad 
nights.  A  good  many  steamboat  corpses  lie  buried 
there,  out  of  sight;  among  the  rest  my  first  friend, 
the  Paul  Jones;  she  knocked  her  bottom  out,  and 
went  down  like  a  pot,  so  the  historian  told  me — 
Uncle  Mumford.  He  said  she  had  a  gray  mare 


MARK    TWAIN 

aboard,  and  a  preacher.  To  me,  this  sufficiently 
accounted  for  the  disaster;  as  it  did,  of  course,  to 
Mumford,  who  added : 

"But  there  are  many  ignorant  people  who  would 
scoff  at  such  a  matter,  and  call  it  superstition.  But 
you  will  always  notice  that  they  are  people  who  have 
never  traveled  with  a  gray  mare  and  a  preacher.  I 
went  down  the  river  in  such  company.  We  grounded 
at  Bloody  Island;  we  grounded  at  Hanging  Dog;  we 
grounded  just  below  this  same  Commerce ;  we  jolted 
Beaver  Dam  Rock;  we  hit  one  of  the  worst  breaks 
in  the  'Graveyard'  behind  Goose  Island;  we  had  a 
roustabout  killed  in  a  fight;  we  burst  a  boiler;  broke 
a  shaft;  collapsed  a  flue;  and  went  into  Cairo  with 
nine  feet  of  water  in  the  hold — may  have  been  more, 
may  have  been  less.  I  remember  it  as  if  it  were 
yesterday.  The  men  lost  their  heads  with  terror. 
They  painted  the  mare  blue,  in  sight  of  town,  and 
threw  the  preacher  overboard,  or  we  should  not  have 
arrived  at  all.  The  preacher  was  fished  out  and 
saved.  He  acknowledged,  himself,  that  he  had  been 
to  blame.  I  remember  it  all  as  if  it  were  yesterday." 

That  this  combination — of  preacher  and  gray  mare 
— should  breed  calamity  seems  strange,  and  at  first 
glance  unbelievable;  but  the  fact  is  fortified  by  so 
much  unassailable  proof  that  to  doubt  is  to  dishonor 
reason.  I  myself  remember  a  case  where  a  captain 
was  warned  by  numerous  friends  against  taking  a 
gray  mare  and  a  preacher  with  him,  but  persisted  in 
his  purpose  in  spite  of  all  that  could  be  said ;  and  the 
same  day — it  may  have  been  the  next,  and  some  say 
it  was,  though  I  think  it  was  the  same  day — he  got 
212 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

drunk  and  fell  down  the  hatchway  and  was  borne  to 
his  home  a  corpse.  This  is  literally  true. 

No  vestige  of  Hat  Island  is  left  now;  every  shred 
of  it  is  washed  away.  I  do  not  even  remember 
what  part  of  the  river  it  used  to  be  in,  except  that 
it  was  between  St.  Louis  and  Cairo  somewhere.  It 
was  a  bad  region — all  around  and  about  Hat  Island, 
in  early  days.  A  farmer,  who  lived  on  the  Illinois 
shore  there,  said  that  twenty-nine  steamboats  had 
left  their  bones  strung  along  within  sight  from  his 
house.  Between  St.  Louis  and  Cairo  the  steamboat 
wrecks  average  one  to  the  mile — two  hundred  wrecks, 
altogether. 

I  could  recognize  big  changes  from  Commerce 
down.  Beaver  Dam  Rock  was  out  in  the  middle  of 
the  river  now,  and  throwing  a  prodigious  "break"; 
it  used  to  be  close  to  the  shore,  and  boats  went  down 
outside  of  it.  A  big  island  that  used  to  be  away 
out  in  mid-river  has  retired  to  the  Missouri  shore, 
and  boats  do  not  go  near  it  any  more.  The  island 
called  Jacket  Pattern  is  whittled  down  to  a  wedge 
now,  and  is  booked  for  early  destruction.  Goose 
Island  is  all  gone  but  a  little  dab,  the  size  of  a  steam- 
boat. The  perilous  "Graveyard,"  among  whose 
numberless  wrecks  we  used  to  pick  our  way  so  slowly 
and  gingerly,  is  far  away  from  the  channel  now,  and 
a  terror  to  nobody.  One  of  the  islands  formerly 
called  the  Two  Sisters  is  gone  entirely;  the  other, 
which  used  to  lie  close  to  the  Illinois  shore,  is  now  on 
the  Missouri  side,  a  mile  away;  it  is  joined  solidly 
to  the  shore,  and  it  takes  a  sharp  eye  to  see  where 
the  seam  is — but  it  is  Illinois  ground  yet,  and  the 
313 


MARK     TWAIN 

people  who  live  on  it  have  to  ferry  themselves  over 
and  work  the  Illinois  roads  and  pay  Illinois  taxes: 
singular  state  of  things! 

Near  the  mouth  of  the  river  several  islands  were 
missing — washed  away.  Cairo  was  still  there — 
easily  visible  across  the  long,  flat  point  upon  whose 
further  verge  it  stands;  but  we  had  to  steam  a  long 
way  around  to  get  to  it.  Night  fell  as  we  were 
going  out  of  the  "Upper  River"  and  meeting  the 
floods  of  the  Ohio.  We  dashed  along  without  anxi- 
ety; for  the  hidden  rock  which  used  to  lie  right  in  the 
way  has  moved  up-stream  a  long  distance  out  of 
the  channel;  or  rather,  about  one  county  has  gone 
into  the  river  from  the  Missouri  point,  and  the  Cairo 
point  has  "made  down"  and  added  to  its  long 
tongue  of  territory  correspondingly.  The  Missis- 
sippi is  a  just  and  equitable  river;  it  never  tumbles 
one  man's  farm  overboard  without  building  a  new 
farm  just  like  it  for  that  man's  neighbor.  This 
keeps  down  hard  feelings. 

Going  into  Cairo,  we  came  near  killing  a  steam- 
boat which  paid  no  attention  to  our  whistle  and  then 
tried  to  cross  our  bows.  By  doing  some  strong 
backing,  we  saved  him;  which  was  a  great  loss,  for 
he  would  have  made  good  literature. 

Cairo  is  a  brisk  town  now;  and  is  substantially 
built,  and  has  a  city  look  about  it  which  is  in  notice- 
able contrast  to  its  former  estate,  as  per  Mr.  Dickens's 
portrait  of  it.  However,  it  was  already  building  with 
bricks  when  I  had  seen  it  last — which  was  when 
Colonel  (now  General)  Grant  was  drilling  his  first 
command  there.  Uncle  Mumford  says  the  libraries 
214 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

and  Sunday-schools  have  done  a  good  work  in 
Cairo,  as  well  as  the  brick-masons.  Cairo  has  a 
heavy  railroad  and  river  trade,  and  her  situation  at 
the  junction  of  the  two  great  rivers  is  so  advantage- 
ous that  she  cannot  well  help  prospering. 

When  I  turned  out  in  the  morning,  we  had  passed 
Columbus,  Kentucky,  and  were  approaching  Hick- 
man,  a  pretty  town  perched  on  a  handsome  hill. 
Hickman  is  in  a  rich  tobacco  region,  and  formerly 
enjoyed  a  great  and  lucrative  trade  in  that  staple, 
collecting  it  there  in  her  warehouses  from  a  large 
area  of  country  and  shipping  it  by  boat ;  but  Uncle 
Mumford  says  she  built  a  railway  to  facilitate  this 
commerce  a  little  more,  and  he  thinks  it  facilitated 
it  the  wrong  way — took  the  bulk  of  the  trade  out 
of  her  hands  by  "collaring  it  along  the  line  without 
gathering  it  at  her  doors." 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

UNDER   FIRE 

began  to  run  upon  the  war  now,  for  we 
1  were  getting  down  into  the  upper  edge  of  the 
former  battle-stretch  by  this  time.  Columbus  was 
just  behind  us,  so  there  was  a  good  deal  said  about 
the  famous  battle  of  Belmont.  Several  of  the  boat's 
officers  had  seen  active  service  in  the  Mississippi 
war-fleet.  I  gathered  that  they  found  themselves 
sadly  out  of  their  element  in  that  kind  of  business  at 
first,  but  afterward  got  accustomed  to  it,  reconciled 
to  it,  and  more  or  less  at  home  in  it.  One  of  our 
pilots  had  his  first  war  experience  in  the  Belmont 
fight,  as  a  pilot  on  a  boat  in  the  Confederate  service. 
I  had  often  had  a  curiosity  to  know  how  a  green  hand 
might  feel,  in  his  maiden  battle,  perched  all  solitary 
and  alone  on  high  in  a  pilot-house,  a  target  for  Tom, 
Dick,  and  Harry,  and  nobody  at  his  elbow  to  shame 
him  from  showing  the  white  feather  when  matters 
grew  hot  and  perilous  around  him;  so  to  me  his 
story  was  valuable — it  filled  a  gap  for  me  which  all 
histories  had  left  till  that  time  empty. 

THE    PILOT'S   FIRST   BATTLE 

He  said : 

"It  was  the  7th  of  November.     The  fight  began 
at  seven  in  the  morning.     I  was  on  the  R.  H.  W. 
216 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

Hill.  Took  over  a  load  of  troops  from  Columbus. 
Came  back,  and  took  over  a  battery  of  artillery. 
My  partner  said  he  was  going  to  see  the  fight ;  wanted 
me  to  go  along.  I  said,  No,  I  wasn't  anxious,  I 
would  look  at  it  from  the  pilot-house.  He  said  I 
was  a  coward,  and  left. 

"That  fight  was  an  awful  sight.     General  Cheat- 
ham  made  his  men  strip  their  coats  off  and  throw 

them  in  a  pile,  and  said,  'Now  follow  me  to  h 1 

or  victory!'  I  heard  him  say  that  from  the  pilot- 
house; and  then  he  galloped  in,  at  the  head  of  his 
troops.  Old  General  Pillow,  with  his  white  hair, 
mounted  on  a  white  horse,  sailed  in,  too ;  leading  his 
troops  as  lively  as  a  boy.  By  and  by  the  Federals 
chased  the  rebels  back,  and  here  they  came !  tearing 
along,  everybody  for  himself  and  Devil  take  the  hind- 
most !  and  down  under  the  bank  they  scrambled,  and 
took  shelter.  I  was  sitting  with  my  legs  hanging 
out  of  the  pilot-house  window.  All  at  once  I  noticed 
a  whizzing  sound  passing  my  ear.  Judged  it  was  a 
bullet.  I  didn't  stop  to  think  about  anything,  I 
just  tilted  over  backward  and  landed  on  the  floor, 
and  stayed  there.  The  balls  came  booming  around. 
Three  cannon-balls  went  through  the  chimney ;  one 
ball  took  off  the  corner  of  the  pilot-house;  shells 
were  screaming  and  bursting  all  around.  Mighty 
warm  times — I  wished  I  hadn't  come.  I  lay  there 
on  the  pilot-house  floor,  while  the  shots  came  faster 
and  faster.  I  crept  in  behind  the  big  stove,  in  the 
middle  of  the  pilot-house.  Presently  a  minie-ball 
came  through  the  stove,  and  just  grazed  my  head 
and  cut  my  hat.  I  judged  it  was  time  to  go  away 
217 


MARK    TWAIN 

from  there.  The  captain  was  on  the  roof  with  a  recU 
headed  major  from  Memphis — a  fine-looking  man. 
I  heard  him  say  he  wanted  to  leave  here,  but  'that 
pilot  is  killed.'  I  crept  over  to  the  starboard  side 
to  pull  the  bell  to  set  her  back;  raised  up  and  took 
a  look,  and  I  saw  about  fifteen  shot-holes  through 
the  window-panes;  had  come  so  lively  I  hadn't 
noticed  them.  I  glanced  out  on  the  water,  and  the 
spattering  shot  were  like  a  hail-storm.  I  thought 
best  to  get  out  of  that  place.  I  went  down  the  pilot- 
house guy  head  first — not  feet  first  but  head  first — 
slid  down — before  I  struck  the  deck,  the  captain  said 
we  must  leave  there.  So  I  climbed  up  the  guy  and 
got  on  the  floor  again.  About  that  time  they  col- 
lared my  partner  and  were  bringing  him  up  to  the 
pilot-house  between  two  soldiers.  Somebody  had 
said  I  was  killed.  He  put  his  head  in  and  saw  me 
on  the  floor  reaching  for  the  backing-bells.  He  said 

'Oh,  h 1!  he  ain't  shot,'  and  jerked  away  from 

the  men  who  had  him  by  the  collar,  and  ran  below. 
We  were  there  until  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon, 
and  then  got  away  all  right. 

"The  next  time  I  saw  my  partner,  I  said,  'Now, 
come  out;  be  honest,  and  tell  me  the  truth.  Where 
did  you  go  when  you  went  to  see  that  battle?'  He 
says,  'I  went  down  in  the  hold.' 

"All  through  that  fight  I  was  scared  nearly  to 
death.  I  hardly  knew  anything,  I  was  so  frightened ; 
but  you  see,  nobody  knew  that  but  me.  Next  day 
General  Polk  sent  for  me,  and  praised  me  for  my 
bravery  and  gallant  conduct. 

"I  never  said  anything,  I  let  it  go  at  that.  I 
218 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

judged  it  wasn't  so,  but  it  was  not  for  me  to  contra- 
dict a  general  officer. 

"Pretty  soon  after  that  I  was  sick,  and  used  up, 
and  had  to  go  off  to  the  Hot  Springs.  When  there, 
I  got  a  good  many  letters  from  commanders  saying 
they  wanted  me  to  come  back.  I  declined,  because 
I  wasn't  well  enough  or  strong  enough;  but  I  kept 
still,  and  kept  the  reputation  I  had  made." 

A  plain  story,  straightforwardly  told;  but  Mum- 
ford  told  me  that  that  pilot  had  "gilded  that  scare  of 
his,  in  spots";  that  his  subsequent  career  in  the  war 
was  proof  of  it. 

We  struck  down  through  the  chute  of  Island 
No.  8,  and  I  went  below  and  fell  into  conversation 
with  a  passenger,  a  handsome  man,  with  easy  car- 
riage and  an  intelligent  face.  We  were  approaching 
Island  No.  10,  a  place  so  celebrated  during  the  war. 
This  gentleman's  home  was  on  the  main  shore  in 
its  neighborhood.  I  had  some  talk  with  him  about 
the  war-times ;  but  presently  the  discourse  fell  upon 
* 'feuds,"  for  in  no  part  of  the  South  has  the  vendetta 
flourished  more  briskly,  or  held  out  longer  between 
warring  families,  than  in  this  particular  region. 
This  gentleman  said : 

"There's  been  more  than  one  feud  around  here, 
in  old  times,  but  I  reckon  the  first  one  was  between 
the  Darnells  and  the  Watsons.  Nobody  don't  know 
now  what  the  first  quarrel  was  about,  it's  so  long 
ago;  the  Darnells  and  the  Watsons  don't  know,  if 
there's  any  of  them  living,  which  I  don't  think  there 
is.  Some  says  it  was  about  a  horse  or  a  cow — any- 
way, it  was  a  little  matter;  the  money  in  it  wasn't 
219 


MARK     TWAIN 

of  no  consequence — none  in  the  world — both  families 
was  rich.  The  thing  could  have  been  fixed  up,  easy 
enough;  but  no,  that  wouldn't  do.  Rough  words 
had  been  passed;  and  so,  nothing  but  blood  could 
fix  it  up  after  that.  That  horse  or  cow,  whichever 
it  was,  cost  sixty  years  of  killing  or  crippling !  Every 
year  or  so  somebody  was  shot,  on  one  side  or  the 
other;  and  as  fast  as  one  generation  was  laid  out, 
their  sons  took  up  the  feud  and  kept  it  a-going. 
And  it's  just  as  I  say;  they  went  on  shooting  each 
other,  year  in  and  year  out — making  a  kind  of  a 
religion  of  it,  you  see — till  they'd  done  forgot,  long 
ago,  what  it  was  all  about.  Wherever  a  Darnell 
caught  a  Watson,  or  a  Watson  caught  a  Darnell,  one 
of  'em  was  going  to  get  hurt — only  question  was, 
which  of  them  got  the  drop  on  the  other.  They'd 
shoot  one  another  down,  right  in  the  presence  of  the 
family.  They  didn't  hunt  for  each  other,  but  when 
they  happened  to  meet,  they  pulled  and  begun. 
Men  would  shoot  boys,  boys  would  shoot  men.  A 
man  shot  a  boy  twelve  years  old — happened  on  him 
in  the  woods  and  didn't  give  him  no  chance.  If  he 
had  'a'  given  him  a  chance,  the  boy'd  'a*  shot  him. 
Both  families  belonged  to  the  same  church  (every- 
body around  here  is  religious) ;  through  all  this  fifty 
or  sixty  years'  fuss,  both  tribes  was  there  every 
Sunday,  to  worship.  They  lived  each  side  of  the 
line,  and  the  church  was  at  a  landing  called  Com- 
promise. Half  the  church  and  half  the  aisle  was  in 
Kentucky,  the  other  half  in  Tennessee.  Sundays 
you'd  see  the  families  drive  up,  all  in  their  Sunday 
clothes — men,  women,  and  children — and  file  up  the 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

aisle,  and  set  down,  quiet  and  orderly,  one  lot  on 
the  Tennessee  side  of  the  church  and  the  other  on  the 
Kentucky  side;  and  the  men  and  boys  would  lean 
their  guns  up  against  the  wall,  handy,  and  then  all 
hands  would  join  in  with  the  prayer  and  praise; 
though  they  say  the  man  next  the  aisle  didn't  kneel 
down,  along  with  the  rest  of  the  family;  kind  of 
stood  guard.  I  don't  know;  never  was  at  that 
church  in  my  life;  but  I  remember  that  that's  what 
used  to  be  said. 

"Twenty  or  twenty-five  years  ago  one  of  the  feud 
families  caught  a  young  man  of  nineteen  out  and 
killed  him.  Don't  remember  whether  it  was  the 
Darnells  and  Watsons,  or  one  of  the  other  feuds;  but 
anyway,  this  young  man  rode  up — steamboat  laying 
there  at  the  time — and  the  first  thing  he  saw  was  a 
whole  gang  of  the  enemy.  He  jumped  down  behind 
a  wood-pile,  but  they  rode  around  and  begun  on 
him,  he  firing  back,  and  they  galloping  and  cavorting 
and  yelling  and  banging  away  with  all  their  might. 
Think  he  wounded  a  couple  of  them;  but  they  closed 
in  on  him  and  chased  him  into  the  river;  and  as  he 
swum  along  down-stream,  they  followed  along  the 
bank  and  kept  on  shooting  at  him,  and  when  he 
struck  shore  he  was  dead.  Windy  Marshall  told  me 
about  it.  He  saw  it.  He  was  captain  of  the  boat. 

"Years  ago,  the  Darnells  was  so  thinned  out  that 
the  old  man  and  his  two  sons  concluded  they'd  leave 
the  country.  They  started  to  take  steamboat  just 
above  No.  10;  but  the  Watsons  got  wind  of  it;  and 
they  arrived  just  as  the  two  young  Darnells  was 
walking  up  the  companionway  with  their  wives  on 


MARK     TWAIN 

their  arms.  The  fight  begun  then,  and  they  never 
got  no  further — both  of  them  killed.  After  that,  old 
Darnell  got  into  trouble  with  the  man  that  run  the 
ferry,  and  the  ferryman  got  the  worst  of  it — and 
died.  But  his  friends  shot  old  Darnell  through  and 
through — filled  him  full  of  bullets,  and  ended  him." 

The  country  gentleman  who  told  me  these  things 
had  been  reared  in  ease  and  comfort,  was  a  man  of 
good  parts,  and  was  college-bred.  His  loose  gram- 
mar was  the  fruit  of  careless  habit,  not  ignorance. 
This  habit  among  educated  men  in  the  West  is  not 
universal,  but  it  is  prevalent — prevalent  in  the 
towns,  certainly,  if  not  in  the  cities ;  and  to  a  degree 
which  one  cannot  help  noticing,  and  marveling  at. 
I  heard  a  Westerner,  who  would  be  accounted  a 
highly  educated  man  in  any  country,  say,  "Never 
mind,  it  don't  make  no  difference,  anyway."  A  life- 
long resident  who  was  present  heard  it,  but  it  made 
no  impression  upon  her.  She  was  able  to  recall  the 
fact  afterward,  when  reminded  of  it;  but  she  con- 
fessed that  the  words  had  not  grated  upon  her  ear 
at  the  time — a  confession  which  suggests  that  if 
educated  people  can  hear  such  blasphemous  gram- 
mar, from  such  a  source,  and  be  unconscious  of  the 
deed,  the  crime  must  be  tolerably  common — so 
common  that  the  general  ear  has  become  dulled  by 
familiarity  with  it,  and  is  no  longer  alert,  no  longer 
sensitive  to  such  affronts. 

No  one  in  the  world  speaks  blemishless  grammar; 
no  one  has  ever  written  it — no  one,  either  in  the  world 
or  out  of  it  (taking  the  Scriptures  for  evidence  on  the 
latter  point) ;  therefore  it  would  not  be  fair  to  exact 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

grammatical  perfection  from  the  peoples  of  the 
Valley;  but  they  and  all  other  peoples  may  justly  be 
required  to  refrain  from  knowingly  and  purposely  de- 
bauching their  grammar. 

I  found  the  river  greatly  changed  at  Island  No.  10. 
The  island  which  I  remembered  was  some  three 
miles  long  and  a  quarter  of  a  mile  wide,  heavily 
timbered,  and  lay  near  the  Kentucky  shore — within 
two  hundred  yards  of  it,  I  should  say.  Now,  how- 
ever, one  had  to  hunt  for  it  with  a  spy-glass.  Noth- 
ing was  left  of  it  but  an  insignificant  little  tuft,  and 
this  was  no  longer  near  the  Kentucky  shore;  it  was 
clear  over  against  the  opposite  shore,  a  mile  away. 
In  war-times  the  island  had  been  an  important 
place,  for  it  commanded  the  situation;  and,  being 
heavily  fortified,  there  was  no  getting  by  it.  It  lay 
between  the  upper  and  lower  divisions  of  the  Union 
forces,  and  kept  them  separate,  until  a  junction  was 
finally  effected  across  the  Missouri  neck  of  land;  but 
the  island  being  itself  joined  to  that  neck  now,  the 
wide  river  is  without  obstruction. 

In  this  region  the  river  passes  from  Kentucky  into 
Tennessee,  back  into  Missouri,  then  back  into  Ken- 
tucky, and  thence  into  Tennessee  again.  So  a  mile 
or  two  of  Missouri  sticks  over  into  Tennessee. 

The  town  of  New  Madrid  was  looking  very  un- 
well; but  otherwise  unchanged  from  its  former  con- 
dition and  aspect.  Its  blocks  of  frame  houses  were 
still  grouped  in  the  same  old  flat  .plain,  and  environed 
by  the  same  old  forests.  It  was  as  tranquil  as  for- 
merly, and  apparently  had  neither  grown  nor  dimin- 
ished in  size.  It  was  said  that  the  recent  high  water 
223 


MARK     TWAIN 

had  invaded  it  and  damaged  its  looks.  This  was 
surprising  news;  for  in  low  water  the  river-bank  is 
very  high  there  (fifty  feet),  and  in  my  day  an  overflow 
had  always  been  considered  an  impossibility.  This 
present  flood  of  1882  will  doubtless  be  celebrated  in 
the  river's  history  for  several  generations  before  a 
deluge  of  like  magnitude  shall  be  seen.  It  put  all 
the  unprotected  lowlands  under  water,  from  Cairo 
to  the  mouth;  it  broke  down  the  levees  in  a  great 
many  places,  on  both  sides  of  the  river;  and  in  some 
regions  south,  when  the  flood  was  at  its  highest,  the 
Mississippi  was  seventy  miles  wide !  a  number  of  lives 
were  lost,  and  the  destruction  of  property  was 
fearful.  The  crops  were  destroyed,  houses  washed 
away,  and  shelterless  men  and  cattle  forced  to  take 
refuge  on  scattering  elevations  here  and  there  in 
field  and  forest,  and  wait  in  peril  and  suffering  until 
the  boats  put  in  commission  by  the  national  and 
local  governments,  and  by  newspaper  enterprise, 
could  come  and  rescue  them.  The  properties  of 
multitudes  of  people  were  under  water  for  months, 
and  the  poorer  ones  must  have  starved  by  the  hun- 
dred if  succor  had  not  been  promptly  afforded.1  The 
water  had  been  falling  during  a  considerable  time 
now,  yet  as  a  rule  we  found  the  banks  still  under 
water. 

1For  a  detailed  and  interesting  description  of  the  great  flood, 
written  on  board  of  the  New  Orleans  Times-Democrat's  relief  boat, 
see  Appendix  A. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

SOME    IMPORTED   ARTICLES 

WE  met  two  steamboats  at  New  Madrid.  Two 
steamboats  in  sight  at  once!  An  infrequent 
spectacle  now  in  the  lonesome  Mississippi.  The  lone- 
liness of  this  solemn,  stupendous  flood  is  impressive 
— and  depressing.  League  after  league,  and  still 
league  after  league,  it  pours  its  chocolate  tide  along, 
between  its  solid  forest  walls,  its  almost  untenanted 
shores,  with  seldom  a  sail  or  a  moving  object  of 
any  kind  to  disturb  the  surface  and  break  the  mo- 
notony of  the  blank,  watery  solitude;  and  so  the 
day  goes,  the  night  comes,  and  again  the  day — and 
still  the  same,  night  after  night  and  day  after  day 
— majestic,  unchanging  sameness  of  serenity,  re- 
pose, tranquillity,  lethargy,  vacancy — symbol  of  eter- 
nity, realization  of  the  heaven  pictured  by  priest  and 
prophet,  and  longed  for  by  the  good  and  thought- 
less! 

Immediately  after  the  War  of  1812  tourists  began 
to  come  to  America,  from  England;  scattering  ones 
at  first,  then  a  sort  of  procession  of  them — a  proces- 
sion which  kept  up  its  plodding,  patient  march 
through  the  land  during  many,  many  years.  Each 
tourist  took  notes,  and  went  home  and  published  a 
book — a  book  which  was  usually  calm,  truthful, 
225 


MARK     TWAIN 

reasonable,  kind;  but  which  seemed  just  the  reverse 
to  our  tender-footed  progenitors.  A  glance  at  these 
tourist-books  shows  us  that  in  certain  of  its  aspects 
the  Mississippi  has  undergone  no  change  since  those 
strangers  visited  it,  but  remains  to-day  about  as  it 
was  then.  The  emotions  produced  in  those  foreign 
breasts  by  these  aspects  were  not  all  formed  on  one 
pattern,  of  course;  they  had  to  be  various,  along  at 
first,  because  the  earlier  tourists  were  obliged  to 
originate  their  emotions,  whereas  in  older  countries 
one  can  always  borrow  emotions  from  one's  prede- 
cessors. And,  mind  you,  emotions  are  among  the 
toughest  things  in  the  world  to  manufacture  out 
of  whole  cloth;  it  is  easier  to  manufacture  seven 
facts  than  one  emotion.  Captain  Basil  Hall,  R.N., 
writing  fifty-five  years  ago,  says : 

Here  I  caught  the  first  glimpse  of  the  object  I  had  so  long 
wished  to  behold,  and  felt  myself  amply  repaid  at  that  moment 
for  all  the  trouble  I  had  experienced  in  coming  so  far;  and  stood 
looking  at  the  river  flowing  past  till  it  was  too  dark  to  distinguish 
anything.  But  it  was  not  until  I  had  visited  the  same  spot  a 
dozen  times  that  I  came  to  a  right  comprehension  of  the  grandeur 
of  the  scene. 

Following  are  Mrs.  Trollope's  emotions.  She  is 
writing  a  few  months  later  in  the  same  year,  1827, 
and  is  coming  in  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi: 

The  first  indication  of  our  approach  to  land  was  the  appear- 
ance of  this  mighty  river  pouring  forth  its  muddy  mass  of  waters, 
and  mingling  with  the  deep  blue  of  the  Mexican  Gulf.  I  never 
beheld  a  scene  so  utterly  desolate  as  this  entrance  of  the  Missis- 
sippi. Had  Dante  seen  it,  he  might  have  drawn  images  of 
another  Bolgia  from  its  horrors.  One  only  object  rears  itself 
above  the  eddying  waters;  this  is  the  mast  of  a  vessel  long  since 
226 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 


wrecked  in  attempting  to  cross  the  bar,  and  it  still 

dismal  witness  of  the  destruction  that  has  been,  and  a  boding 

prophet  of  that  which  is  to  come. 

Emotions  of  Hon.  Charles  Augustus  Murray  (near 
St.  Louis),  seven  years  later: 

It  is  only  when  you  ascend  the  mighty  current  for  fifty  or  a 
hundred  miles,  and  use  the  eye  of  imagination  as  well  as  that  of 
nature,  that  you  begin  to  understand  all  his  might  and  majesty. 
You  see  him  fertilizing  a  boundless  valley,  bearing  along  in  his 
course  the  trophies  of  his  thousand  victories  over  the  shattered 
forest — here  carrying  away  large  masses  of  soil  with  all  their 
growth,  and  there  forming  islands  destined  at  some  future  period 
to  be  the  residence  of  man;  and  while  indulging  in  this  prospect, 
it  is  then  time  for  reflection  to  suggest  that  the  current  before 
you  has  flowed  through  two  or  three  thousand  miles,  and  has  yet 
to  travel  one  thousand  three  hundred  more  before  reaching  its 
ocean  destination. 

Receive,  now,  the  emotions  of  Captain  Marryat, 
R.N.,  author  of  the  sea  tales,  writing  in  1837,  three 
years  after  Mr.  Murray: 

Never,  perhaps,  in  the  records  of  nations,  was  there  an  in- 
stance of  a  century  of  such  unvarying  and  unmitigated  crime  as 
is  to  be  collected  from  the  history  of  the  turbulent  and  blood- 
stained Mississippi.  The  stream  itself  appears  as  if  appropriate 
for  the  deeds  which  have  been  committed.  It  is  not  like  most 
rivers,  beautiful  to  the  sight,  bestowing  fertility  in  its  course; 
not  one  that  the  eye  loves  to  dwell  upon  as  it  sweeps  along, 
nor  can  you  wander  upon  its  bank,  or  trust  yourself  without 
danger  to  its  stream.  It  is  a  furious,  rapid,  desolating  torrent, 
loaded  with  alluvial  soil;  and  few  of  those  who  are  received  into 
its  waters  ever  rise  again,1  or  can  support  themselves  long  upon 
its  surface  without  assistance  from  some  friendly-  log.  It  con- 
tains the  coarsest  and  most  uneatable  of  fish,  such  as  catfish 

1  There  was  a  foolish  superstition  of  some  little  prevalence  in  that 
day  that  the  Mississippi  would  neither  buoy  up  a  swimmer  nor 
permit  a  drowned  person's  body  to  rise  to  the  surface. 
227 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  such  genus,  and,  as  you  descend,  its  banks  are  occupied 
with  the  fetid  alligator,  while  the  panther  basks  at  its  edge  in 
th.e  cane-brakes,  almost  impervious  to  man.  Pouring  its  im- 
petuous waters  through  wild  tracts  covered  with  trees  of  little 
value  except  for  firewood,  it  sweeps  down  whole  forests  in  its 
course,  which  disappear  in  tumultuous  confusion,  whirled  away 
by  the  stream  now  loaded  with  the  masses  of  soil  which  nour- 
ished their  roots,  often  blocking  up  and  changing  for  a  time  the 
channel  of  the  river,  which,  as  if  in  anger  at  its  being  opposed, 
inundates  and  devastates  the  whole  country  round;  and  as  soon 
as  it  forces  its  way  through  its  former  channel,  plants  in  every 
direction  the  uprooted  monarchs  of  the  forest  (upon  whose 
branches  the  bird  will  never  again  perch,  or  the  racoon,  the 
opossum,  or  the  squirrel  climb)  as  traps  to  the  adventurous 
navigators  of  its  waters  by  steam,  who,  borne  down  by  these 
concealed  dangers  which  pierce  through  the  planks,  very  often 
have  not  time  to  steer  for  and  gain  the  shore  before  they  sink 
to  the  bottom.  There  are  no  pleasing  associations  connected 
with  the  great  common  sewer  of  the  Western  America,  which 
pours  out  its  mud  into  the  Mexican  Gulf,  polluting  the  clear 
blue  sea  for  many  miles  beyond  its  mouth.  It  is  a  river  of 
desolation;  and  instead  of  reminding  you,  like  other  beautiful 
rivers,  of  an  angel  which  has  descended  for  the  benefit  of  man, 
you  imagine  it  a  devil,  whose  energies  have  been  only  overcome 
by  the  wonderful  power  of  steam. 

It  is  pretty  crude  literature  for  a  man  accustomed 
to  handling  a  pen;  still,  as  a  panorama  of  the  emo- 
tions sent  weltering  through  this  noted  visitor's 
breast  by  the  aspect  and  traditions  of  the  "great 
common  sewer,"  it  has  a  value.  A  value,  though 
marred  in  the  matter  of  statistics  by  inaccuracies; 
for  the  catfish  is  a  plenty  good  enough  fish  for  ..any- 
body, and  there  are  no  panthers  that  are  "impervi- 
ous to  man." 

Later  still  comes  Alexander  Mackay,  of  the  Middle 
Temple,  Barrister  at  Law,  with  a  better  digestion, 
and  no  catfish  dinner  aboard,  and  feels  as  follows: 
228 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

The  Mississippi!  It  was  with  indescribable  emotions  that  I 
first  felt  myself  afloat  upon  its  waters.  How  often  in  my  school- 
boy dreams,  and  in  my  waking  visions  afterward,  had  my  im- 
agination pictured  to  itself  the  lordly  stream,  rolling  with  tu- 
multuous current  through  the  boundless  region  to  which  it  has 
given  its  name,  and  gathering  into  itself,  in  its  course  to  the 
ocean,  the  tributary  waters  of  almost  every  latitude  in  the 
temperate  zone !  Here  it  was  then  in  its  reality,  and  I,  at  length, 
steaming  against  its  tide.  I  looked  upon  it  with  that  reverence 
with  which  every  one  must  regard  a  great  feature  of  external 
nature. 

So  much  for  the  emotions.  The  tourists,  one  and 
all,  remark  upon  the  deep,  brooding  loneliness  and 
desolation  of  the  vast  river.  Captain  Basil  Hall, 
who  saw  it  at  flood  stage,  says: 

Sometimes  we  passed  along  distances  of  twenty  or  thirty 
miles  without  seeing  a  single  habitation.  An  artist,  in  search 
of  hints  for  a  painting  of  the  deluge,  would  here  have  found  them 
in  abundance. 

The  first  shall  be  last,  etc.  Just  two  hundred 
years  ago,  the  old  original  first  and  gallantest  of  all 
the  foreign  tourists,  pioneers,  head  of  the  procession, 
ended  his  weary  and  tedious  discovery  voyage  down 
the  solemn  stretches  of  the  great  river  —  La  Salle, 
whose  name  will  last  as  long  as  the  river  itself  shall 
last.  We  quote  from  Mr.  Parkman: 

And  now  they  neared  their  journey's  end.  On  the  6th  of 
April,  the  river  divided  itself  into  three  broad  channels.  La 
Salle  followed  that  of  the  west,  and  D'Autray  that  of  the  east; 
while  Tonty  took  the  middle  passage.  As  he  drifted  down  the 
turbid  current,  between  the  low  and  marshy  shores,  the  brackish 
Water  changed  to  brine,  and  the  breeze  grew  fresh  with  the  salt 
breath  of  the  sea.  Then  the  broad  bosom  of  the  great  Gulf 
•opened  on  his  sight,  tossing  its  restless  billows,  limitless,  voiceless, 
ionely  as  when  bora  of  chaos,  without  a  sail,  without  a  sign  of  life. 
229 


MARK    TWAIN 

Then,  on  a  spot  of  solid  ground,  La  Salle  reared 
a  column  "bearing  the  arms  of  France;  the  French- 
men were  mustered  under  arms;  and  while  the  New 
England  Indians  and  their  squaws  looked  on  in 
wondering  silence,  they  chanted  the  Te  Deum,  the 
Exaudiat,  and  the  Domine,  salvum  fac  regent.'' 

Then,  while  the  musketry  volleyed  and  rejoicing 
shouts  burst  forth,  the  victorious  discoverer  planted 
the  column,  and  made  proclamation  in  a  loud  voice, 
taking  formal  possession  of  the  river  and  the  vast 
countries  watered  by  it,  in  the  name  of  the  King. 
The  column  bore  this  inscription: 

LOUIS  LE  GRAND,  ROY  DE  FRANCE  ET  DE  NAVARRE, 
REGNE;  LE  NEUVIEME  AVRIL,  1682. 

New  Orleans  intended  to  fittingly  celebrate,  this 
present  year,  the  bicentennial  anniversary  of  this 
illustrious  event;  but  when  the  time  came,  all  her 
energies  and  surplus  money  were  required  in  other 
directions,  for  the  flood  was  upon  the  land  then, 
making  havoc  and  devastation  everywhere. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

UNCLE   MUMFORD   UNLOADS 

ALL  day  we  swung  along  down  the  river,  and  had 
the  stream  almost  wholly  to  ourselves.  For- 
merly, at  such  a  stage  of  the  water,  we  should  have 
passed  acres  of  lumber-rafts  and  dozens  of  big  coal- 
barges;  also  occasional  little  trading-scows,  peddling 
along  from  farm  to  farm,  with  the  peddler's  family 
on  board ;  possibly  a  random  scow,  bearing  a  humble 
Hamlet  &  Co.  on  an  itinerant  dramatic  trip.  But 
these  were  all  absent.  Far  along  in  the  day  we  saw 
one  steamboat;  just  one,  and  no  more.  She  was 
lying  at  rest  in  the  shade,  within  the  wooded  mouth 
of  the  Obion  River.  The  spy -glass  revealed  the  fact 
that  she  was  named  for  me — or  he  was  named  for 
me,  whichever  you  prefer.  As  this  was  the  first 
time  I  had  ever  encountered  this  species  of  honor,  it 
seems  excusable  to  mention  it,  and  at  the  same  time 
call  the  attention  of  the  authorities  to  the  tardiness 
of  my  recognition  of  it. 

Noted  a  big  change  in  the  river  at  Island  21.  It 
was  a  very  large  island,  and  used  to  lie  out  toward 
midstream;  but  it  is  joined  fast  to  the  main  shore 
now,  and  has  retired  from  business  as  an  island. 

As  we  approached  famous  and  formidable  Plum 
Point  darkness  fell,  but  that  was  nothing  to  shudder 
231 


MARK     TWAIN 

about — in  these  modern  times.  For  now  the  nation- 
al government  has  turned  the  Mississippi  into  a 
sort  of  two- thousand-mile  torchlight  procession.  In 
the  head  of  every  crossing,  and  in  the  foot  of  every 
crossing,  the  government  has  set  up  a  clear-burning 
lamp.  You  are  never  entirely  in  the  dark,  now; 
there  is  always  a  beacon  in  sight,  either  before  you, 
or  behind  you,  or  abreast.  One  might  almost  say 
that  lamps  have  been  squandered  there.  Dozens  of 
crossings  are  lighted  which  were  not  shoal  when  they 
were  created,  and  have  never  been  shoal  since;  cross- 
ings so  plain,  too,  and  also  so  straight,  that  a  steam- 
boat can  take  herself  through  them  without  any 
help,  after  she  has  been  through  once.  Lamps  in 
such  places  are  of  course  not  wasted;  it  is  much  more 
convenient  and  comfortable  for  a  pilot  to  hold  on 
them  than  on  a  spread  of  formless  blackness  that 
won't  stay  still;  and  money  is  saved  to  the  boat,  at 
the  same  time,  for  she  can  of  course  make  more 
miles  with  her  rudder  amidships  than  she  can  with 
it  squared  across  her  stern  and  holding  her  back. 

But  this  thing  has  knocked  the  romance  out  of 
piloting,  to  a  large  extent.  It  and  some  other  things 
together  have  knocked  all  the  romance  out  of  it. 
For  instance,  the  peril  from  snags  is  not  now  what 
it  once  was.  The  government's  snag-boats  go  pa- 
trolling up  and  down,  in  these  matter-of-fact  days, 
pulling  the  river's  teeth;  they  have  rooted  out  all 
the  old  clusters  which  made  many  localities  so 
formidable;  and  they  allow  no  new  ones  to  collect. 
Formerly,  if  your  boat  got  away  from  you,  on  a 
black  night,  and  broke  for  the  woods,  it  was  an 
232 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

anxious  time  with  you;  so  was  it,  also,  when  you 
were  groping  your  way  through  solidified  darkness  in 
a  narrow  chute,  but  all  that  is  changed  now — you 
flash  out  your  electric  light,  transform  night  into 
day  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  and  your  perils  and 
anxieties  are  at  an  end.  Horace  Bixby  and  George 
Ritchie  have  charted  the  crossings  and  laid  out  the 
courses  by  compass;  they  have  invented  a  lamp  to 
go  with  the  chart,  and  have  patented  the  whole. 
With  these  helps,  one  may  run  in  the  fog  now,  with 
considerable  security,  and  with  a  confidence  unknown 
in  the  old  days. 

With  these  abundant  beacons,  and  the  banishment 
of  snags,  plenty  of  daylight  in  a  box  and  ready  to 
be  turned  on  whenever  needed,  and  a  chart  compass 
to  fight  the  fog  with,  piloting,  at  a  good  stage  of 
water,  is  now  nearly  as  safe  and  simple  as  driving 
stage,  and  is  hardly  more  than  three  times  as  ro- 
mantic. 

And  now,  in  these  new  days  of  infinite  change,  the 
Anchor  Line  have  raised  the  captain  above  the  pilot 
by  giving  him  the  bigger  wages  of  the  two.  This 
was  going  far,  but  they  have  not  stopped  there. 
They  have  decreed  that  the  pilot  shall  remain  at  his 
post,  and  stand  his  watch  clear  through,  whether  the 
boat  be  under  way  or  tied  up  to  the  shore.  We,  that 
were  once  the  aristocrats  of  the  river,  can't  go  to 
bed  now,  as  we  used  to  do,  and  sleep  while  a  hundred 
tons  of  freight  are  lugged  aboard;  no,  we  must  sit  in 
the  pilot-house;  and  keep  awake,  too.  Verily  we 
are  being  treated  like  a  parcel  of  mates  and  engineers. 
The  government  has  taken  away  the  romance  of 
233 


MARK     TWAIN 

our  calling;  the  Company  has  taken  away  its  state 
and  dignity. 

Plum  Point  looked  as  it  had  always  looked  by 
night,  with  the  exception  that  now  there  were  bea- 
cons to  mark  the  crossings,  and  also  a  lot  of  other 
lights  on  the  Point  and  along  its  shore;  these  latter 
glinting  from  the  fleet  of  the  United  States  River 
Commission,  and  from  a  village  which  the  officials 
have  built  on  the  land  for  offices  and  for  the  em- 
ployees of  the  service.  The  military  engineers  of  the 
Commission  have  taken  upon  their  shoulders  the 
job  of  making  the  Mississippi  over  again — a  job 
transcended  in  size  by  only  the  original  job  of  creat- 
ing it.  They  are  building  wing-dams  here  and  there 
to  deflect  the  current;  and  dikes  to  confine  it  in 
narrower  bounds;  and  other  dikes  to  make  it  stay 
there;  and  for  unnumbered  miles  along  the  Missis- 
sippi they  are  felling  the  timber-front  for  fifty  yards 
back,  with  the  purpose  of  shaving  the  bank  down  to 
low-water  mark  with  the  slant  of  a  house-roof,  and 
ballasting  it  with  stones;  and  in  many  places  they 
have  protected  the  wasting  shores  with  rows  of  piles. 
One  who  knows  the  Mississippi  will  promptly  aver 
— not  aloud  but  to  himself — that  ten  thousand  River 
Commissions,  with  the  mines  of  the  world  at  their 
back,  cannot  tame  that  lawless  stream,  cannot  curb 
it  or  confine  it,  cannot  say  to  it,  "Go  here,"  or  "Go 
there,"  and  make  it  obey;  cannot  save  a  shore  which 
it  has  sentenced;  cannot  bar  its  path  with  an  ob- 
struction which  it  will  not  tear  down,  dance  over, 
and  laugh  at.  But  a  discreet  man  will  not  put  these 
things  into  spoken  words;  for  the  West  Point  engi- 
234 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

neers  have  not  their  superiors  anywhere;  they  know 
all  that  can  be  known  of  their  abstruse  science;  and 
so,  since  they  conceive  that  they  can  fetter  and  hand- 
cuff that  river  and  boss  him,  it  is  but  wisdom  for 
the  unscientific  man  to  keep  still,  lie  low,  and  wait 
till  they  do  it.  Captain  Eads,  with  his  jetties,  has 
done  a  work  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  which 
seemed  clearly  impossible ;  so  we  do  not  feel  full  con- 
fidence now  to  prophesy  against  like  impossibilities. 
Otherwise  one  would  pipe  out  and  say  the  Commis- 
sion might  as  well  bully  the  comets  in  their  courses 
and  undertake  to  make  them  behave,  as  try  to  bully 
the  Mississippi  into  right  and  reasonable  conduct. 

I  consulted  Uncle  Mumford  concerning  this  and 
cognate  matters;  and  I  give  here  the  result,  steno- 
graphically  reported,  and  therefore  to  be  relied  on 
as  being  full  and  correct;  except  that  I  have  here 
and  there  left  out  remarks  which  were  addressed  to 
the  men,  such  as  ' '  Where  in  blazes  are  you  going  with 
that  barrel  now?"  and  which  seemed  to  me  to  break 
the  flow  of  the  written  statement,  without  com- 
pensating by  adding  to  its  information  or  its  clear- 
ness. Not  that  I  have  ventured  to  strike  out  all 
such  interjections;  I  have  removed  only  those  which 
were  obviously  irrelevant;  wherever  one  occurred 
which  I  felt  any  question  about,  I  have  judged  it 
safest  to  let  it  remain. 

UNCLE  MUMFORD'S  IMPRESSIONS 

Uncle  Mumford  said : 

"As  long  as  I  have  been  mate  of  a  steamboat — 
thirty  years — T  have  watched  this  river  and  studied 
235 


MARK     TWAIN 

it.  Maybe  I  could  have  learned  more  about  it 
at  West  Point,  but  if  I  believe  it  I  wish  I  may 
be  WHAT  are  you  sucking  your  fingers  there  for? — 
Collar  that  kag  of  nails!  Four  years  at  West  Point, 
and  plenty  of  books  and  schooling,  will  learn  a  man 
a  good  deal,  I  reckon,  but  it  won't  learn  him  the 
river.  You  turn  one  of  those  little  European  rivers 
over  to  this  Commission,  with  its  hard  bottom  and 
clear  water,  and  it  would  just  be  a  holiday  job  for 
them  to  wall  it,  and  pile  it,  and  dike  it,  and  tame  it 
down,  and  boss  it  around,  and  make  it  go  wherever 
they  wanted  it  to,  and  stay  where  they  put  it,  and 
do  just  as  they  said,  every  time.  But  this  ain't  that 
kind  of  a  river.  They  have  started  in  here  with  big 
confidence,  and  the  best  intentions  in  the  world ;  but 
they  are  going  to  get  left.  What  does  Ecclesiastes 
vii  13  say?  Says  enough  to  knock  their  little  game 
galley-west,  don't  it?  Now  you  look  at  their  meth- 
ods once.  There  at  Devil's  Island,  in  the  Upper 
River,  they  wanted  the  water  to  go  one  way,  the 
water  wanted  to  go  another.  So  they  put  up  a 
stone  wall.  But  what  does  the  river  care  for  a  stone 
wall?  When  it  got  ready,  it  just  bulged  through  it. 
Maybe  they  can  build  another  that  will  stay;  that 
is,  up  there — but  not  down  here  they  can't.  Down 
here  in  the  Lower  River,  they  drive  some  pegs  to 
turn  the  water  away  from  the  shore  and  stop  it 
from  slicing  off  the  bank;  very  well,  don't  it  go 
straight  over  and  cut  somebody  else's  bank?  Cer- 
tainly. Are  they  going  to  peg  all  the  banks  ?  Why, 
they  could  buy  ground  and  build  a  new  Mississippi 
cheaper.  They  are  pegging  Bulletin  Tow-head  now. 
236 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

It  won't  do  any  good.  If  the  river  has  got  a  mort- 
gage on  that  island,  it  will  foreclose,  sure;  pegs  or  no 
pegs.  Away  down  yonder,  they  have  driven  two 
rows  of  piles  straight  through  the  middle  of  a  dry 
bar  half  a  mile  long,  which  is  forty  foot  out  of  the 
water  when  the  river  is  low.  What  do  you  reckon 
that  is  for?  If  I  know,  I  wish  I  may  land  inHUMP 
yourself,  you  son  of  an  undertaker! — out  with  that 
coal-oil,  now,  lively,  LIVELY!  And  just  look  at  what 
they  are  trying  to  do  down  there  at  Milliken's  Bend. 
There's  been  a  cut-off  in  that  section,  and  Vicksburg 
is  left  out  in  the  cold.  It's  a  country  town  now. 
The  river  strikes  in  below  it ;  and  a  boat  can't  go  up 
to  the  town  except  in  high  water.  Well,  they  are 
going  to  build  wing-dams  in  the  bend  opposite  the 
foot  of  103,  and  throw  the  water  over  and  cut  off 
the  foot  of  the  island  and  plow  down  into  an  old 
ditch  where  the  river  used  to  be  in  ancient  times ;  and 
they  think  they  can  persuade  the  water  around  that 
way,  and  get  it  to  strike  in  above  Vicksburg,  as  it 
used  to  do,  and  fetch  the  town  back  into  the  world 
again.  That  is,  they  are  going  to  take  this  whole 
Mississippi,  and  twist  it  around  and  make  it  run 
several  miles  up-stream.  Well,  you've  got  to  ad- 
mire men  that  deal  in  ideas  of  that  size  and  can  tote 
them  around  without  crutches;  but  you  haven't  got 
to  believe  they  can  do  such  miracles,  have  you?  And 
yet  you  ain't  absolutely  obliged  to  believe  they  can't. 
I  reckon  the  safe  way,  where  a  man  can  afford  it,  is 
to  copper  the  operation,  and  at  the  same  time  buy 
enough  property  in  Vicksburg  to  square  you  up  in 
case  they  win.  Government  is  doing  a  deal  for  the 
237 


MARK     TWAIN 

Mississippi,  now — spending  loads  of  money  on  her. 
When  there  used  to  be  four  thousand  steamboats  and 
ten  thousand  acres  of  coal-barges,  and  rafts,  and 
trading-scows,  there  wasn't  a  lantern  from  St.  Paul 
to  New  Orleans,  and  the  snags  were  thicker  than 
bristles  on  a  hog's  back ;  and  now,  when  there's  three 
dozen  steamboats  and  nary  barge  or  raft,  govern- 
ment has  snatched  out  all  the  snags,  and  lit  up  the 
shores  like  Broadway,  and  a  boat's  as  safe  on  the 
river  as  she'd  be  in  heaven.  And  I  reckon  that  by 
the  time  there  ain't  any  boats  left  at  all,  the  Commis- 
sion will  have  the  old  thing  all  reorganized,  and 
dredged  out,  and  fenced  in,  and  tidied  up,  to  a  degree 
that  will  make  navigation  just  simply  perfect,  and 
absolutely  safe  and  profitable;  and  all  the  days  will 
be  Sundays,  and  all  the  mates  will  be  Sunday-school 
suWHAT  -  in  -  the  -  nation  -  you  -  fooling  -  around  - 
there-for,  you  sons  of  unrighteousness,  heirs  of  per- 
dition! Going  to  be  a  YEAR  getting  that  hogshead 
ashore?" 

During  our  trip  to  New  Orleans  and  back,  we  had 
many  conversations  with  river-men,  planters,  jour- 
nalists, and  officers  of  the  River  Commission — with 
conflicting  and  confusing  results.  To  wit: 

1.  Some  believed  in  the  Commission's  scheme  to 
arbitrarily    and    permanently    confine     (and    thus 
deepen)  the  channel,  preserve  threatened  shores,  etc. 

2.  Some  believed  that  the  Commission's  money 
ought  to  be  spent  only  on  building  and  repairing  the 
great  system  of  levees. 

3.  Some  believed  that  the  higher  you  build  your 

238 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

levee,  the  higher  the  river's  bottom  will  rise;  and 
that  consequently  the  levee  system  is  a  mistake. 

4.  Some  believed  in  the  scheme  to  relieve  the 
river,  in  flood-time,  by  turning  its  surplus  waters 
off  into  Lake  Borgne,  etc. 

5.  Some  believed  in  the  scheme  of  northern  lake- 
reservoirs  to  replenish  the  Mississippi  in  low-water 
seasons. 

Whenever  you  find  a  man  down  there  who  be- 
lieves in  one  of  these  theories  you  may  turn  to  the 
next  man  and  frame  your  talk  upon  the  hypothesis 
that  he  does  not  believe  in  that  theory ;  and  after  you 
have  had  experience,  you  do  not  take  this  course 
doubtfully  or  hesitatingly,  but  with  the  confidence 
of  a  dying  murderer — converted  one,  I  mean.  For 
you  will  have  come  to  know,  with  a  deep  and  restful 
certainty,  that  you  are  not  going  to  meet  two  people 
sick  of  the  same  theory,  one  right  after  the  other. 
No,  there  will  always  be  one  or  two  with  the  other 
diseases  along  between.  And  as  you  proceed,  you 
will  find  out  one  or  two  other  things.  You  will  find 
out  that  there  is  no  distemper  of  the  lot  but  is  con- 
tagious; and  you  cannot  go  where  it  is  without  catch- 
ing it.  You  may  vaccinate  yourself  with  deterrent 
facts  as  much  as  you  please — it  will  do  no  good;  it 
will  seem  to  "take,"  but  it  doesn't;  the  moment  you 
rub  against  any  one  of  those  theorists,  make  up  your 
mind  that  it  is  time  to  hang  out  your  yellow  flag.. 

Yes,  you  are  his  sure  victim:  yet  his  work  is  not 

all  to  your  hurt — only  part  of  it ;  for  he  is  like  your 

family  physician,  who  conies  and  cures  the  mumps, 

and  leaves  the  scarlet  fever  behind.     If  your  man 

239 


MARK    TWAIN 

is  a  Lake-Borgne-relief  theorist,  for  instance,  he  will 
exhale  a  cloud  of  deadly  facts  and  statistics  which 
will  lay  you  out  with  that  disease,  sure;  but  at  the 
same  time  he  will  cure  you  of  any  other  of  the  five 
theories  that  may  have  previously  got  into  your 
system. 

I  have  had  all  the  five;  and  had  them  "bad";  but 
ask  me  not,  in  mournful  numbers,  which  one  racked 
me  hardest,  or  which  one  numbered  the  biggest  sick- 
list,  for  I  do  not  know.  In  truth,  no  one  can  answer 
the  latter  question.  Mississippi  Improvement  is  a 
mighty  topic,  down  yonder.  Every  man  on  the 
river-banks,  south  of  Cairo,  talks  about  it  every  day, 
during  such  moments  as  he  is  able  to  spare  from 
talking  about  the  war;  and  each  of  the  several  chief 
theories  has  its  host  of  zealous  partisans;  but,  as  I 
have  said,  it  is  not  possible  to  determine  which  cause 
numbers  the  most  recruits. 

All  were  agreed  upon  one  point,  however:  if  Con- 
gress would  make  a  sufficient  appropriation,  a  colos- 
sal benefit  would  result.  Very  well;  since  then  the 
appropriation  has  been  made — possibly  a  sufficient 
one,  certainly  not  too  large  a  one.  Let  us  hope  that 
the  prophecy  will  be  amply  fulfilled. 

One  thing  will  be  easily  granted  by  the  reader: 
that  an  opinion  from  Mr.  Edward  Atkinson,  upon 
any  vast  national  commercial  matter,  comes  as  near 
ranking  as  authority  as  can  the  opinion  of  any  indi- 
vidual in  the  Union.  What  he  has  to  say  about 
Mississippi  River  Improvement  will  be  found  in  the 
Appendix.1 

1  See  Appendix  B. 
2/10 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

Sometimes  half  a  dozen  figures  will  reveal,  as  with 
a  lightning  flash,  the  importance  of  a  subject  which 
ten  thousand  labored  words,  with  the  same  purpose 
in  view,  had  left  at  last  but  dim  and  uncertain.  Here 
is  a  case  of  the  sort — paragraph  from  the  Cincinnati 
Commercial: 

The  towboat  Jos.  B.  Williams  is  on  her  way  to  New  Orleans 
with  a  tow  of  thirty -two  barges,  containing  six  hundred  thousand 
bushels  (seventy-six  pounds  to  the  bushel)  of  coal  exclusive  of  her 
own  fuel,  being  the  largest  tow  ever  taken  to  New  Orleans  or 
anywhere  else  in  the  world.  Her  freight  bill,  at  three  cents  a 
bushel,  amounts  to  $18,000.  It  would  take  eighteen  hundred 
'Cars,  of  three  hundred  and  thirty-three  bushels  to  the  car,  to 
transport  this  amount  of  coal.  At  $10  per  ton,  or  $100  per  car, 
which  would  be  a  fair  price  for  the  distance  by  rail,  the  freight 
bill  would  amount  to  $180,000,  or  $162,000  more  by  rail  than 
by  river.  The  tow  will  be  taken  from  Pittsburg  to  New  Orleans 
in  fourteen  or  fifteen  days.  It  would  take  one  hundred  trains 
of  eighteen  cars  to  the  train  to  transport  this  one  tow  of  six 
hundred  thousand  bushels  of  coal,  and  even  if  it  made  the  usual 
speed  of  fast*  freight  lines,  it  would  take  one  whole  summer  to 
put  it  through  by  rail. 

When  a  river  in  good  condition  can  enable  one 
to  save  $162,000,  and  a  whole  summer's  time,  on  a 
single  cargo,  the  wisdom  of  taking  measures  to  keep 
the  river  in  good  condition  is  made  plain  to  even  the 
uncommercial  mind. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 


A   FEW   SPECIMEN   BRICKS 

WE  passed  through  the  Plum  Point  region, 
turned  Craig-head's  Point,  and  glided  un- 
challenged by  what  was  once  the  formidable  Fort 
Pillow,  memorable  because  of  the  massacre  perpe- 
trated there  during  the  war.  Massacres  are  sprin- 
kled with  some  frequency  through  the  histories  of 
several  Christian  nations,  but  this  is  almost  the  only 
one  that  can  be  found  in  American  history;  perhaps 
it  is  the  only  one  which  rises  to  a  size  correspondent 
to  that  huge  and  somber  title.  We  have  the  "Bos- 
ton Massacre,"  where  two  or  three  people  were 
killed;  but  we  must  bunch  Anglo-Saxon  history  to- 
gether to  find  the  fellow  to  the  Fort  Pillow  tragedy ; 
and  doubtless  even  then  we  must  travel  back  to  the 
days  and  the  performances  of  Cceur  de  Lion,  that 
fine  "hero,"  before  we  accomplish  it. 

More  of  the  river's  freaks.  In  times  past  the 
channel  used  to  strike  above  Island  37,  by  Brandy- 
wine  Bar,  and  down  toward  Island  39.  Afterward 
changed  its  course  and  went  from  Brandywine  down 
through  Vogelman's  chute  in  the  Devil's  Elbow,  to 
Island  39 — part  of  this  course  reversing  the  old 
order;  the  river  running  up  four  or  five  miles,  instead 
of  down,  and  cutting  off,  throughout,  some  fifteen 
242 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

miles  of  distance.     This  in  1876.     All  that  region  is 
now  called  Centennial  Island. 

There  is  a  tradition  that  Island  37  was  one  of  the 
principal  abiding  -  places  of  the  once  celebrated 
"Morel's  Gang."  This  was  a  colossal  combination 
of  robbers,  horse-thieves,  negro-stealers,  and  counter- 
feiters, engaged  in  business  along  the  river  some  fifty 
or  sixty  years  ago.  While  our  journey  across  the 
country  toward  St.  Louis  was  in  progress  we  had  had 
no  end  of  Jesse  James  and  his  stirring  history;  for 
he  had  just  been  assassinated  by  an  agent  of  the 
Governor  of  Missouri,  and  was  in  consequence  oc- 
cupying a  good  deal  of  space  in  the  newspapers. 
Cheap  histories  of  him  were  for  sale  by  train-boys. 
According  to  these,  he  was  the  most  marvelous 
creature  of  his  kind  that  had  ever  existed.  It  was  a 
mistake.  Murel  was  his  equal  in  boldness,  in  pluck,  in 
rapacity ;  in  cruelty,  brutality,  heartlessness,  treach- 
ery, and  in  general  and  "comprehensive  vileness  and 
shamelessness;  and  very  much  his  superior  in  some 
larger  aspects.  James  was  a  retail  rascal;  Murel, 
wholesale.  James's  modest  genius  dreamed  of  no 
loftier  flight  than  the  planning  of  raids  upon  cars, 
coaches,  and  country  banks.  Murel  projected  negro 
insurrections  and  the  capture  of  New  Orleans;  and 
furthermore,  on  occasion,  this  Murel  could  go  into 
a  pulpit  and  edify  the  congregation.  What  are 
James  and  his  half-dozen  vulgar  rascals  compared 
with  this  stately  old-time  criminal,  with  his  sermons, 
his  meditated  insurrections  and  city-captures,  and 
his  majestic  following  of  ten  hundred  men,  sworn  to 
do  his  evil  will ! 

243 


MARK     TWAIN 

Here  is  a  paragraph  or  two  concerning  this  big 
operator,  from  a  now  forgotten  book  which  was 
published  half  a  century  ago: 

He  appears  to  have  been  a  most  dexterous  as  well  as  consum- 
mate villain.  When  he  traveled,  his  usual  disguise  was  that  of 
an  itinerant  preacher;  and  it  is  said  that  his  discourses  were 
very  "soul-moving" — interesting  the  hearers  so  much  that  they 
forgot  to  look  after  their  horses,  which  were  carried  away  by 
his  confederates  while  he  was  preaching.  But  the  stealing  of 
horses  in  one  state,  and  selling  them  in  another,  was  but  a  small 
portion  of  their  business;  the  most  lucrative  was  the  enticing 
slaves  to  run  away  from  their  masters  that  they  might  sell  them 
in  another  quarter.  This  was  arranged  as  follows:  they  would 
tell  a  negro  that  if  he  would  run  away  from  his  master,  and 
allow  them  to  sell  him,  he  should  receive  a  portion  of  the  money 
paid  for  him,  and  that  upon  his  return  to  them  a  second  time 
they  would  send  him  to  a  free  state,  where  he  would  be  safe. 
The  poor  wretches  complied  with  this  request,  hoping  to  obtain 
money  and  freedom;  they  would  be  sold  to  another  master,  and 
run  away  again  to  their  employers;  sometimes  they  would  be 
sold  in  this  manner  three  or  four  times,  until  they  had  realized 
three  or  four  thousand  dollars  by  them ;  but  as,  after  this,  there 
was  fear  of  detection,  the  usual  custom  was  to  get  rid  of  the 
only  witness  that  could  be  produced  against  them,  which  was  the 
negro  himself,  by  murdering  him  and  throwing  his  body  into 
the  Mississippi.  Even  if  it  was  established  that  they  had 
stolen  a  negro,  before  he  was  murdered,  they  were  always  pre- 
pared to  evade  punishment;  for  they  concealed  the  negro  who 
had  run  away  until  he  was  advertised  and  a  reward  offered  to 
any  man  who  would  catch  him.  An  advertisement  of  this  kind 
warrants  the  person  to  take  the  property,  if  found.  And  then 
the  negro  becomes  a  property  in  trust;  when,  therefore,  they 
sold  the  negro,  it  only  became  a  breach  of  trust,  not  stealing;  and 
for  a  breach  of  trust  the  owner  of  the  property  can  only  have 
redress  by  a  civil  action,  which  was  useless,  as  the  damages 
were  never  paid.  It  may  be  inquired  how  it  was  that  Murel 
escaped  Lynch  law  under  such  circumstances.  This  will  be 
easily  understood  when  it  is  stated  that  he  had  more  than  a 
thousand  sworn  confederates,  all  ready  at  a  moment's  notice  to 
244 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

support  any  of  the  gang  who  might  be  in  trouble.  The  names 
of  all  the  principal  confederates  of  Murel  were  obtained  from 
himself,  in  a  manner  which  I  shall  presently  explain.  The  gang 
was  composed  of  two  classes:  The  Heads  or  Council,  as  they 
were  called,  who  planned  and  concerted,  but  seldom  acted; 
they  amounted  to  about  four  hundred.  The  other  class  were 
the  active  agents,  and  were  termed  strikers,  and  amounted  to 
about  six  hundred  and  fifty.  These  were  the  tools  in  the  hands  of 
the  others;  they  ran  all  the  risk,  and  received  but  a  small  portion 
of  the  money;  they  were  in  the  power  of  the  leaders  of  the  gang, 
who  would  sacrifice  them  at  any  time  by  handing  them  over  to 
justice,  or  sinking  their  bodies  in  the  Mississippi.  The  general 
rendezvous  of  this  gang  of  miscreants  was  on  the  Arkansas  side 
of  the  river,  where  they  concealed  their  negroes  in  the  morasses 
and  cane-brakes. 

The  depredations  of  this  extensive  combination  were  severely 
felt;  but  so  well  were  their  plans  arranged  that,  although  Murel, 
who  was  always  active,  was  everywhere  suspected,  there  was  no 
proof  to  be  obtained.  It  so  happened,  however,  that  a  young 
man  of  the  name  of  Stewart,  who  was  looking  after  two  slaves 
which  Murel  had  decoyed  away,  fell  in  with  him  and  obtained  his 
confidence,  took  the  oath,  and  was  admitted  into  the  gang  as  one 
of  the  General  Council.  By  this  means  all  was  discovered;  for 
Stewart  turned  traitor,  although  he  had  taken  the  oath,  and 
having  obtained  every  information,  exposed  the  whole  concern, 
the  names  of  all  the  parties,  and  finally  succeeded  in  bringing 
home  sufficient  evidence  against  Murel  to  procure  his  conviction 
and  sentence  to  the  penitentiary  (Murel  was  sentenced  to  four- 
teen years'  imprisonment).  So  many  people  who  were  supposed 
to  be  honest,  and  bore  a  respectable  name  in  the  different  states, 
were  found  to  be  among  the  list  of  the  Grand  Council  as  pub- 
lished by  Stewart,  that  every  attempt  was  made  to  throw  dis- 
credit upon  his  assertions — his  character  was  villified,  and  more 
than  one  attempt  was  made  to  assassinate  him.  He  was  obliged 
to  quit  the  Southern  states  in  consequence.  It  is,  however, 
now  well  ascertained  to  have  been  all  true;  and  although  some 
blame  Mr.  Stewart  for  having  violated  his  oath,  they  no  longer 
attempt  to  deny  that  his  revelations  were  correct.  I  will  quote 
one  or  two  portions  of  Murel's  confessions  to  Mr.  Stewart, 
made  to  him  when  they  were  journeying  together.  I  ought  to 
have  observed  that  the  ultimate  intentions  of  Murel  and  his 
24J5 


MARK    TWAIN 

associates  were,  by  his  own  account,  on  a  very  extended  scale; 
having  no  less  an  object  in  view  than  raising  the  blacks  against 
the  whites,  taking  possession  of  and  plundering  New  Orleans,  and 
making  themselves  possessors  of  the  territory.  The  following  are  a 
few  extracts: 

"I  collected  all  my  friends  about  New  Orleans  at  one  of  our 
friends'  houses  in  that  place,  and  we  sat  in  council  three  days 
before  we  got  all  our  plans  to  our  notion;  we  then  determined 
to  undertake  the  rebellion  at  every  hazard,  and  make  as  many 
friends  as  we  could  for  that  purpose.  Every  man's  business 
being  assigned  him,  I  started  to  Natchez  on  foot,  having  sold 
my  horse  in  New  Orleans — with  the  intention  of  stealing  another 
after  I  started.  I  walked  four  days,  and  no  opportunity  offered 
for  me  to  get  a  horse.  The  fifth  day,  about  twelve,  I  had  become 
tired,  and  stopped  at  a  creek  to  get  some  water  and  rest  a  little. 
While  I  was  sitting  on  a  log,  looking  down  the  road  the  way 
that  I  had  come,  a  man  came  in  sight  riding  on  a  good-looking 
horse.  The  very  moment  I  saw  him,  I  was  determined  to  have 
his  horse,  if  he  was  in  the  garb  of  a  traveler.  He  rode  up,  and 
I  saw  from  his  equipage  that  he  was  a  traveler.  I  rose  and 
drew  an  elegant  rifle  pistol  on  him  and  ordered  him  to  dismount. 
He  did  so,  and  I  took  his  horse  by  the  bridle  and  pointed  down 
the  creek,  and  ordered  him  to  walk  before  me.  He  went  a  few 
hundred  yards  and  stopped.  I  hitched  his  horse,  and  then  made 
him  undress  himself,  all  to  his  shirt  and  drawers,  and  ordered 
him  to  turn  his  back  to  me.  He  said:  'If  you  are  determined 
to  kill  me,  let  me  have  time  to  pray  before  I  die.'  I  told  him 
I  had  no  time  to  hear  him  pray.  He  turned  around  and  dropped 
on  his  knees,  and  I  shot  him  through  the  back  of  the  head.  I 
ripped  open  his  belly,  and  took  out  his  entrails  and  sunk  him  in 
the  creek.  I  then  searched  his  pockets,  and  found  four  hundred 
dollars  and  thirty-seven  cents,  and  a  number  of  papers  that 
I  did  not  take  time  to  examine.  I  sunk  the  pocketbook  and 
papers  and  his  hat  in  the  creek.  His  boots  were  brand  new,  and 
fitted  me  genteelly;  and  I  put  them  on  and  sunk  my  old  shoes 
in  the  creek,  to  atone  for  them.  I  rolled  up  his  clothes  and 
put  them  into  his  portmanteau,  as  they  were  brand-new  cloth  of 
the  best  quality.  I  mounted  as  fine  a  horse  as  ever  I  straddled, 
and  directed  my  course  for  Natchez  in  much  better  style  than 
I  had  been  for  the  last  five  days. 

"Myself  and  a  fellow  by  the  name  of  Crenshaw  gathered  four 
246 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

good  horses  and  started  for  Georgia.  We  got  in  company  with 
a  young  South  -  Carolinian  just  before  we  got  to  Cumberland 
Mountain,  and  Crenshaw  soon  knew  all  about  his  business. 
He  had  been  to  Tennessee  to  buy  a  drove  of  hogs,  but  when  he 
got  there  pork  was  dearer  than  he  calculated,  and  he  declined 
purchasing.  We  concluded  he  was  a  prize.  Crenshaw  winked 
at  me;  I  understood  his  idea.  Crenshaw  had  traveled  the  road 
before,  but  I  never  had;  we  had  traveled  several  miles  on  the 
mountain,  when  we  passed  near  a  great  precipice;  just  before 
we  passed  it  Crenshaw  asked  me  for  my  whip,  which  had  a  pound 
of  lead  in  the  butt;  I  handed  it  to  him,  and  he  rode  up  by  the 
side  of  the  South-Carolinian,  and  gave  him  a  blow  on  the  side 
of  the  head  and  tumbled  him  from  his  horse;  we  lit  from  our 
horses  and  fingered  his  pockets;  we  got  twelve  hundred  and 
sixty-two  dollars.  Crenshaw  said  he  knew  a  place  to  hide  him, 
and  he  gathered  him  under  his  arms  and  I  by  his  feet,  and  con- 
veyed him  to  a  deep  crevice  in  the  brow  of  the  precipice,  and 
tumbled  him  into  it,  and  he  went  out  of  sight;  we  then  tumbled 
in  his  saddle,  and  took  his  horse  with  us,  which  was  worth  two 
hundred  dollars. 

"We  were  detained  a  few  days,  and  during  that  time  our 
friend  went  to  a  little  village  in  the  neighborhood  and  saw  the 
negro  advertised  (a  negro  in  our  possession),  and  a  description 
of  the  two  men  of  whom  he  had  been  purchased,  and  giving  his 
suspicions  of  the  men.  It  was  rather  squally  times,  but  any 
port  in  a  storm;  we  took  the  negro  that  night  on  the  bank  of 
a  creek  which  runs  by  the  farm  of  our  friend,  and  Crenshaw  shot 
him  through  the  head.  We  took  out  his  entrails  and  sunk  him 
in  the  creek. 

"He  had  sold  the  other  negro  the  third  time  on  Arkansas 
River  for  upward  of  five  hundred  dollars;  and  then  stole  him 
and  delivered  him  into  the  hand  of  his  friend,  who  conducted 
him  to  a  swamp,  and  veiled  the  tragic  scene,  and  got  the  last 
gleanings  and  sacred  pledge  of  secrecy;  as  a  game  of  that  kind 
will  not  do  unless  it  ends  in  a  mystery  to  all  but  the  fraternity. 
He  sold  the  negro,  first  and  last,  for  nearly  two  thousand  dollars, 
and  then  put  him  forever  out  of  the  reach  of  all  pursuers;  and 
they  can  never  graze  him  unless  they  can  find  the  negro;  and 
that  they  cannot  do,  for  his  carcass  has  fed  many  a  tortoise  and 
catfish  before  this  time,  and  the  frogs  have  sung  this  many  a 
long  day  to  the  silent  repose  of  his  skeleton." 
247 


MARK     TWAIN 

We  were  approaching  Memphis,  in  front  of  which 
city,  and  witnessed  by  its  people,  was  fought  the 
most  famous  of  the  river  battles  of  the  Civil  War. 
Two  men  whom  I  had  served  under,  in  my  river  days, 
took  part  in  that  fight :  Mr.  Bixby,  head  pilot  of  the 
Union  fleet,  and  Montgomery,  Commodore  of  the 
Confederate  fleet.  Both  saw  a  great  deal  of  active 
service  during  the  war,  and  achieved  high  reputations 
for  pluck  and  capacity. 

As  we  neared  Memphis,  we  began  to  cast  about 
for  an  excuse  to  stay  with  the  Gold  Dust  to  the  end 
of  her  course — Vicksburg.  We  were  so  pleasantly 
situated  that  we  did  not  wish  to  make  a  change. 
I  had  an  errand  of  considerable  importance  to  do 
at  Napoleon,  Arkansas,  but  perhaps  I  could  man- 
age it  without  quitting  the  Gold  Dust.  I  said  as 
much;  so  we  decided  to  stick  to  present  quar- 
ters. 

The  boat  was  to  tarry  at  Memphis  till  ten  the 
next  morning.  It  is  a  beautiful  city,  nobly  situated 
on  a  commanding  bluff  overlooking  the  river.  The 
streets  are  straight  and  spacious,  though  not  paved 
in  a  way  to  incite  distempered  admiration.  No,  the 
admiration  must  be  reserved  for  the  town's  sewerage 
system,  which  is  called  perfect ;  a  recent  reform,  how- 
ever, for  it  was  just  the  other  way  up  to  a  few  years 
ago — a  reform  resulting  from  the  lesson  taught  by 
a  desolating  visitation  of  the  yellow  fever.  In  those 
awful  days  the  people  were  swept  off  by  hundreds, 
by  thousands;  and  so  great  was  the  reduction  caused 
by  flight  and  by  death  together,  that  the  population 
was  diminished  three-fourths,  and  so  remained  for 
248 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

a  time.     Business  stood  nearly  still,  and  the  streets 
bore  an  empty  Sunday  aspect. 

Here  is  a  picture  of  Memphis,  at  that  disastrous 
time,  drawn  by  a  German  tourist  who  seems  to  have 
been  an  eye-witness  of  the  scenes  which  he  described. 
It  is  from  chapter  vii  of  his  book,  just  published  in 
Leipzig,  Mississippi-Fahrten,  von  Ernst  von  Hesse- 
Wartegg: 

In  August  the  yellow  fever  had  reached  its  extremest  height. 
Daily  hundreds  fell  a  sacrifice  to  the  terrible  epidemic.  The  city 
was  become  a  mighty  graveyard,  two-thirds  of  the  population 
had  deserted  the  place,  and  only  the  poor,  the  aged,  and  the  sick 
remained  behind,  a  sure  prey  for  the  insidious  enemy.  The 
houses  were  closed;  little  lamps  burned  in  front  of  many — a  sign 
that  here  death  had  entered.  Often  several  lay  dead  in  a  single 
house ;  from  the  windows  hung  black  crape.  The  stores  were  shut 
up,  for  their  owners  were  gone  away  or  dead. 

Fearful  evil!  In  the  briefest  space  it  struck  down  and  swept 
away  even  the  most  vigorous  victim.  A  slight  indisposition, 
then  an  hour  of  fever,  then  the  hideous  delirium,  then — the 
Yellow  Death!  On  the  street-corners,  and  in  the  squares,  lay 
sick  men,  suddenly  overtaken  by  the  disease;  and  even  corpses, 
distorted  and  rigid.  Food  failed.  Meat  spoiled  in  a  few  hours 
in  the  fetid  and  pestiferous  air,  and  turned  black. 

Fearful  clamors  issue  from  many  houses!  Then  after  a  season 
they  cease,  and  all  is  still;  noble,  self-sacrificing  men  come  with 
the  coffin,  nail  it  up,  and  carry  it  away  to  the  graveyard.  In  the 
night  stillness  reigns.  Only  the  physicians  and  the  hearses 
hurry  through  the  streets;  and  out  of  the  distance,  at  intervals, 
comes  the  muffled  thunder  of  the  railway-train,  which  with  the 
speed  of  the  wind,  as  if  hunted  by  furies,  flies  by  the  pest-ridden 
city  without  halting. 

But  there  is  life  enough  there  now.     The  popula- 
tion exceeds  forty  thousand  and  is  augmenting,  and 
trade  is  in  a  flourishing  condition.     We  drove  about 
the  city;  visited  the  park  and  the  sociable  horde  of 
249 


MARK    TWAIN 

squirrels  there;  saw  the  fine  residences,  rose-clad  and 
in  other  ways  enticing  to  the  eye;  and  got  a  good 
breakfast  at  the  hotel. 

A  thriving  place  is  the  Good  Samaritan  City  of  the 
Mississippi:  has  a  great  wholesale  jobbing  trade; 
foundries,  machine  shops,  and  manufactories  of 
wagons,  carriages,  and  cotton-seed  oil;  and  is  shortly 
to  have  cotton-mills  and  elevators. 

Her  cotton  receipts  reached  five  hundred  thousand 
bales  last  year — an  increase  of  sixty  thousand  over 
the  year  before.  Out  from  her  healthy  commercial 
heart  issue  five  trunk-lines  of  railway;  and  a  sixth 
is  being  added. 

This  is  a  very  different  Memphis  from  the  one 
which  the  vanished  and  unremembered  procession  of 
foreign  tourists  used  to  put  into  their  books  long 
time  ago.  In  the  days  of  the  now  forgotten  but 
once  renowned  and  vigorously  hated  Mrs.  Trollope, 
Memphis  seems  to  have  consisted  mainly  of  one  long 
street  of  log  houses,  with  some  outlying  cabins 
sprinkled  around  rearward  toward  the  woods;  and 
now  and  then  a  pig,  and  no  end  of  mud.  That  was 
fifty-five  years  ago.  She  stopped  at  the  hotel. 
Plainly  it  was  not  the  one  which  gave  us  our  break- 
fast. She  says : 

The  table  was  laid  for  fifty  persons,  and  was  nearly  full. 
They  ate  in  perfect  silence,  and  with  such  astonishing  rapidity 
that  their  dinner  was  over  literally  before  ours  was  begun;  the 
only  sounds  heard  were  those  produced  by  the  knives  and  forks, 
with  the  unceasing  chorus  of  coughing,  etc. 

"Coughing,  etc.1'    The  "etc."  stands  for  an  un- 
pleasant word  there,  a  word  which  she  does  not 
250 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

always  charitably  cover  up,  but  sometimes  prints. 
You  will  find  it  in  the  following  description  of  a 
steamboat  dinner  which  she  ate  in  company  with  a 
lot  of  aristocratic  planters;  wealthy,  well-born,  igno- 
rant swells  they  were,  tinseled  with  the  usual  harm- 
less military  and  judicial  titles  of  that  old  day  of 
cheap  shams  and  windy  pretense : 

The  total  want  of  all  the  usual  courtesies  of  the  table;  the 
voracious  rapidity  with  which  the  viands  were  seized  and  de- 
voured; the  strange  uncouth  phrases  and  pronunciation;  the 
loathsome  spitting,  from  the  contamination  of  which  it  was 
absolutely  impossible  to  protect  our  dresses;  the  frightful  manner 
of  feeding  with  their  knives,  till  the  whole  blade  seemed  to  enter 
into  the  mouth;  and  the  still  more  frightful  manner  of  cleaning 
the  teeth  afterward  with  a  pocket-knife,  soon  forced  us  to  feel 
that  we  were  not  surrounded  by  the  generals,  colonels,  and 
majors  of  the  Old  World,  and  that  the  dinner-hour  was  to  be 
anything  rather  than  an  hour  of  enjoyment. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

SKETCHES   BY   THE   WAY 

IT  was  a  big  river,  below  Memphis;  banks  brim- 
ming full,  everywhere,  and  very  frequently  more 
than  full,  the  waters  pouring  out  over  the  land,  flood- 
ing the  woods  and  fields  for  miles  into  the  interior; 
and  in  places  to  a  depth  of  fifteen  feet;  signs  all 
about  of  men's  hard  work  gone  to  ruin,  and  all  to 
be  done  over  again,  with  straitened  means  and  a 
weakened  courage.  A  melancholy  picture,  and  a 
continuous  one;  hundreds  of  miles  of  it.  Sometimes 
the  beacon  lights  stood  in  water  three  feet  deep,  in 
the  edge  of  dense  forests  which  extended  for  miles 
without  farm,  wood-yard,  clearing,  or  break  of  any 
kind ;  which  meant  that  the  keeper  of  the  light  must 
come  in  a  skiff  a  great  distance  to  discharge  his  trust 
— and  often  in  desperate  weather.  Yet  I  was  told 
that  the  work  is  faithfully  performed,  in  all  weathers; 
and  not  always  by  men — sometimes  by  women,  if 
the  man  is  sick  or  absent.  The  government  fur- 
nishes oil,  and  pays  ten  or  fifteen  dollars  a  month  for 
the  lighting  and  tending.  A  government  boat  dis- 
tributes oil  and  pays  wages  once  a  month. 

The  Ship  Island  region  was  as  woodsy  and  tenant- 
less  as  ever.     The  island  has  ceased  to  be  an  island; 
has  joinsd  itself  compactly  to  the  main  shore,  and 
252 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

wagons  travel  now  where  the  steamboats  used  to 
navigate.  No  signs  left  of  the  wreck  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania. Some  farmer  will  turn  up  her  bones  with 
his  plow  one  day,  no  doubt,  and  be  surprised. 

We  were  getting  down  now  into  the  migrating 
negro  region.  These  poor  people  could  never  travel 
when  they  were  slaves;  so  they  make  up  for  the 
privation  now.  They  stay  on  a  plantation  till  the 
desire  to  travel  seizes  them;  then  they  pack  up,  hail 
a  steamboat,  and  clear  out.  Not  for  any  particular 
place;  no,  nearly  any  place  will  answer;  they  only 
want  to  be  moving.  The  amount  of  money  on  hand 
will  answer  the  rest  of  the  conundrum  for  them.  If 
it  will  take  them  fifty  miles,  very  well ;  let  it  be  fifty. 
If  not,  a  shorter  flight  will  do. 

During  a  couple  of  days  we  frequently  answered!" 
these  hails.  Sometimes  there  was  a  group  of  high- 
water-stained,  tumbledown  cabins,  populous  with 
colored  folk,  and  no  whites  visible;  with  grassless 
patches  of  dry  ground  here  and  there;  a  few  felled 
trees,  with  skeleton  cattle,  mules,  and  horses,  eating 
the  leaves  and  gnawing  the  bark — no  other  food  for 
them  in  the  flood- wasted  land.  Sometimes  there  was 
a  single  lonely  landing-cabin;  near  it  the  colored 
family  that  had  hailed  us;  little  and  big,  old  and 
young,  roosting  on  the  scant  pile  of  household  goods ; 
these  consisting  of  a  rusty  gun,  some  bedticks, 
chests,  tinware,  stools,  a  crippled  looking-glass,  a 
venerable  arm-chair,  and  six  or  eight  base-born  and 
spiritless  yellow  curs,  attached  to  the  family  by 
strings.  They  must  have  their  dogs;  can't  go  with- 
out their  dogs.  Yet  the  dogs  are  never  willing;  they 
253 


MARK    TWAIN 

always  object;  so,  one  after  another,  in  ridiculous 
procession,  they  are  dragged  aboard;  all  four  feet 
braced  and  sliding  along  the  stage,  head  likely  to  be 
pulled  off;  but  the  tugger  marching  determinedly 
forward,  bending  to  his  work,  with  the  rope  over  his 
shoulder  for  better  purchase.  Sometimes  a  child 
is  forgotten  and  left  on  the  bank;  but  never  a 
dog. 

The  usual  river  gossip  going  on  in  the  pilot-house. 
Island  No.  63 — an  island  with  a  lovely  "chute,"  or 
passage,  behind  it  in  the  former  times.  They  said 
Jesse  Jamieson,  in  the  Skylark,  had  a  visiting  pilot 
with  him  one  trip — a  poor  old  broken-down,  super- 
annuated fellow — left  him  at  the  wheel,  at  the  foot 
of  63,  to  run  off  the  watch.  The  ancient  mariner 
went  up  through  the  chute,  and  down  the  river 
outside;  and  up  the  chute  and  down  the  river  again; 
and  yet  again  and  again;  and  handed  the  boat  over 
to  the  relieving  pilot,  at  the  end  of  three  hours  of 
honest  endeavor,  at  the  same  old  foot  of  the  island 
where  he  had  originally  taken  the  wheel!  A  darky 
on  shore  who  had  observed  the  boat  go  by,  about 
thirteen  times,  said,  "'clar  to  gracious,  I  wouldn't  be 
s'prised  if  dey's  a  whole  line  o'  dem  Skylarks!" 

Anecdote  illustrative  of  influence  of  reputation  in 
the  changing  of  opinion.  The  Eclipse  was  renowned 
for  her  swiftness.  One  day  she  passed  along;  an 
old  darky  on  shore,  absorbed  in  his  own  matters, 
did  not  notice  what  steamer  it  was.  Presently 
some  one  asked : 

"Any  boat  gone  up?" 

"Yes,  sah." 

254 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

"Was  she  going  fast?" 

"Oh,  so-so — loafin'  along." 

"Now,  do  you  know  what  boat  that  was?" 

"No,  sah." 

"Why,  uncle,  that  was  the  Eclipse." 

"No!  Is  dat  so?  Well,  I  bet  it  was — cause  she 
jes'  went  by  here  a-sparklin'!" 

Piece  of  history  illustrative  of  the  violent  style  of 
some  of  the  people  down  along  here.  During  the 
early  weeks  of  high  water,  A's  fence-rails  washed 
down  on  B's  ground,  and  B's  rails  washed  up  in  the 
eddy  and  landed  on  A's  ground.  A  said,  "Let  the 
thing  remain  so;  I  will  use  your  rails,  and  you  use 
mine."  But  B  objected — wouldn't  have  it  so.  One 
day,  A  came  down  on  B's  grounds  to  get  his  rails. 
B  said,  "I'll  kill  you!"  and  proceeded  for  him  with 
his  revolver.  A  said,  "I'm  not  armed."  So  B,  who 
wished  to  do  only  what  was  right,  threw  down  his 
revolver;  then  pulled  a  knife,  and  cut  A's  throat 
all  around,  but  gave  his  principal  attention  to  the 
front,  and  so  failed  to  sever  the  jugular.  Struggling 
around,  A  managed  to  get  his  hands  on  the  discarded 
revolver,  and  shot  B  dead  with  it — and  recovered 
from  his  own  injuries. 

Further  gossip ;  after  which,  everybody  went  below 
to  get  afternoon  coffee,  and  left  me  at  the  wheel, 
alone.  Something  presently  reminded  me  of  our 
last  hour  in  St.  Louis,  part  of  which  I  spent  on  this 
boat's  hurricane-deck,  aft.  I  was  joined  there  by  a 
stranger,  who  dropped  into  conversation  with  me — 
a  brisk  young  fellow,  who  said  he  was  born  in  a  town 
in  the  interior  of  Wisconsin,  and  had  never  seen  a 
255 


MARK     TWAIN 

steamboat  until  a  week  before.  Also  said  that  on 
the  way  down  from  La  Crosse  he  had  inspected  and 
examined  his  boat  so  diligently  and  with  such  pas- 
sionate interest  that  he  had  mastered  the  whole 
thing  from  stem  to  rudder-blade.  Asked  me  where 
I  was  from.  I  answered,  "New  England."  "Oh,  a 
Yank!"  said  he;  and  went  chatting  straight  along, 
without  waiting  for  assent  or  denial.  He  immedi- 
ately proposed  to  take  me  all  over  the  boat  and  tell 
me  the  names  of  her  different  parts,  and  teach  me 
their  uses.  Before  I  could  enter  protest  or  excuse, 
he  was  already  rattling  glibly  away  at  his  benevolent 
work;  and  when  I  perceived  that  he  was  misnaming 
the  things,  and  inhospitably  amusing  himself  at  the 
expense  of  an  innocent  stranger  from  a  far  country, 
I  held  my  peace  and  let  him  have  his  way.  He  gave 
me  a  world  of  misinformation;  and  the  further  he 
went,  the  wider  his  imagination  expanded,  and  the 
more  he  enjoyed  his  cruel  work  of  deceit.  Some- 
times, after  palming  off  a  particularly  fantastic  and 
outrageous  lie  upon  me,  he  was  so  "full  of  laugh" 
that  he  had  to  step  aside  for  a  minute,  upon  one 
pretext  or  another,  to  keep  me  from  suspecting.  I 
stayed  faithfully  by  him  until  his  comedy  was  fin- 
ished. Then  he  remarked  that  he  had  undertaken 
to  "learn"  me  all  about  a  steamboat,  and  had  done 
it;  but  that  if  he  had  overlooked  anything,  just  ask 
him  and  he  would  supply  the  lack.  "Anything 
about  this  boat  that  you  don't  know  the  name  of  or 
the  purpose  of,  you  come  to  me  and  I'll  tell  you." 
I  said  I  would,  and  took  my  departure,  disappeared, 
and  approached  him  from  another  quarter,  whence 
256 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

he  could  not  see  me.  There  he  sat,  all  alone,  dou- 
bling himself  up  and  writhing  this  way  and  that,  in 
the  throes  of  unappeasable  laughter.  He  must  have 
made  himself  sick;  for  he  was  not  publicly  visible 
afterward  for  several  days.  Meantime,  the  episode 
dropped  out  of  my  mind. 

The  thing  that  reminded  me  of  it  now,  when  I  was 
alone  at  the  wheel,  was  the  spectacle  of  this  young 
fellow  standing  in  the  pilot-house  door,  with  the 
knob  in  his  hand,  silently  and  severely  inspecting 
me.  I  don't  know  when  I  have  seen  anybody  look 
so  injured  as  he  did.  He  did  not  say  anything — 
simply  stood  there  and  looked;  reproachfully  looked 
and  pondered.  Finally  he  shut  the  door  and  started 
away:  halted  on  the  texas  a  minute;  came  slowly 
back  and  stood  in  the  door  again,  with  that  grieved 
look  on  his  face;  gazed  upon  me  awhile  in  meek 
rebuke,  then  said: 

"You  let  me  learn  you  all  about  a  steamboat, 
didn't  you?" 

"Yes,"  I  confessed. 

"Yes,  you  did — didn't  you?" 

"Yes." 

"You  are  the  feller  that— that— " 

Language  failed.  Pause — impotent  struggle  for 
further  words — then  he  gave  it  up,  choked  out  a 
deep,  strong  oath,  and  departed  for  good.  After- 
ward I  saw  him  several  times  below  during  the  trip ; 
but  he  was  cold — would  not  look  at  me.  Idiot !  if  he 
had  not  been  in  such  a  sweat  to  play  his  witless, 
practical  joke  upon  me,  in  the  beginning,  I  would 
have  persuaded  his  thoughts  into  some  other  direc- 
257 


MARK     TWAIN 

tion,  and  saved  him  from  committing  that  wanton 
and  silly  impoliteness. 

I  had  myself  called  with  the  four-o'clock  watch, 
mornings,  for  one  cannot  see  too  many  summer 
sunrises  on  the  Mississippi.  They  are  enchanting. 
First,  there  is  the  eloquence  of  silence;  for  a  deep 
hush  broods  everywhere.  Next,  there  is  the  haunt- 
ing sense  of  loneliness,  isolation,  remoteness  from  the 
worry  and  bustle  of  the  world.  The  dawn  creeps  in 
stealthily;  the  solid  walls  of  black  forest  soften  to 
gray,  and  vast  stretches  of  the  river  open  up  and 
reveal  themselves;  the  water  is  glass-smooth,  gives 
off  spectral  little  wreaths  of  white  mist,  there  is  not 
the  faintest  breath  of  wind,  nor  stir  of  leaf;  the  tran- 
quillity is  profound  and  infinitely  satisfying.  Then 
a  bird  pipes  up,  another  follows,  and  soon  the  pipings 
develop  into  a  jubilant  riot  of  music.  You  see  none 
of  the  birds ;  you  simply  move  through  an  atmosphere 
of  song  which  seems  to  sing  itself.  When  the  light 
has  become  a  little  stronger,  you  have  one  of  the 
fairest  and  softest  pictures  imaginable.  You  have 
the  intense  green  of  the  massed  and  crowded  foliage 
near  by;  you  see  it  paling  shade  by  shade  in  front 
of  you;  upon  the  next  projecting  cape,  a  mile  off  or 
more,  the  tint  has  lightened  to  the  tender  young 
green  of  spring ;  the  cape  beyond  that  one  has  almost 
lost  color,  and  the  furthest  one,  miles  away  under 
the  horizon,  sleeps  upon  the  water  a  mere  dim  vapor, 
and  hardly  separable  from  the  sky  above  it  and  about 
it.  And  all  this  stretch  of  river  is  a  mirror,  and  you 
have  the  shadowy  reflections  of  the  leafage  and  the 
curving  shores  and  the  receding  capes  pictured  in  it. 
258 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

Well,  that  is  all  beautiful ;  soft  and  rich  and  beautiful ; 
and  when  the  sun  gets  well  up,  and  distributes  a  pink 
flush  here  and  a  powder  of  gold  yonder  and  a  purple 
haze  where  it  will  yield  the  best  effect,  you  grant  that 
you  have  seen  something  that  is  worth  remembering. 

We  had  the  Kentucky  Bend  country  in  the  early 
morning — scene  of  a  strange  and  tragic  accident  in 
the  old  times.  Captain  Poe  had  a  small  stern-wheel 
boat,  for  years  the  home  of  himself  and  his  wife. 
One  night  the  boat  struck  a  snag  in  the  head  of 
Kentucky  Bend,  and  sank  with  astonishing  sudden- 
ness; water  already  well  above  the  cabin  floor  when 
the  captain  got  aft.  So  he  cut  into  his  wife's  state- 
room from  above  with  an  ax;  she  was  asleep  in  the 
upper  berth,  the  roof  a  flimsier  one  than  was  sup- 
posed ;  the  first  blow  crashed  down  through  the  rotten 
boards  and  clove  her  skull. 

This  bend  is  all  filled  up  now — result  of  a  cut-off; 
and  the  same  agent  has  taken  the  great  and  once 
much-frequented  Walnut  Bend,  and  set  it  away  back 
in  a  solitude  far  from  the  accustomed  track  of  passing 
steamers. 

Helena  we  visited,  and  also  a  town  I  had  not 
heard  of  before,  it  being  of  recent  birth — Arkansas 
City.  It  was  born  of  'a  railway ;  the  Little  Rock, 
Mississippi  River  and  Texas  Railroad  touches  the 
river  there.  We  asked  a  passenger  who  belonged 
there  what  sort  of  a  place  it  was.  "Well,"  said  he, 
after  considering,  and  with  the  air  of  one  who  wishes 

to  take  time  and  be  accurate,  "it's  a  h 1  of  a 

place."     A  description  which  was  photographic  for 

exactness.    There  were  several  rows  and  clusters  of 

259 


MARK     TWAIN 

shabby  frame  houses,  and  a  supply  of  mud  sufficient 
to  insure  the  town  against  a  famine  in  that  article  for 
a  hundred  years;  for  the  overflow  had  but  lately 
subsided.  There  were  stagnant  ponds  in  the  streets, 
here  and  there,  and  a  dozen  rude  scows  were  scat- 
tered about,  lying  aground  wherever  they  happened 
to  have  been  when  the  waters  drained  off  and  people 
could  do  their  visiting  and  shopping  on  foot  once 
more.  Still,  it  is  a  thriving  place,  with  a  rich  coun- 
try behind  it,  an  elevator  in  front  of  it,  and  also  a 
fine  big  mill  for  the  manufacture  of  cotton-seed  oil. 
I  had  never  seen  this  kind  of  a  mill  before. 

Cotton-seed  was  comparatively  valueless  in  my 
time ;  but  it  is  worth  twelve  or  thirteen  dollars  a  ton 
now,  and  none  of  it  is  thrown  away.  The  oil  made 
from  it  is  colorless,  tasteless,  and  almost,  if  not 
entirely,  odorless.  It  is  claimed  that  it  can,  by 
proper  manipulation,  be  made  to  resemble  and  per- 
form the  office  of  any  and  all  oils,  and  be  produced 
at  a  cheaper  rate  than  the  cheapest  of  the  originals. 
Sagacious  people  shipped  it  to  Italy,  doctored  it, 
labeled  it,  and  brought  it  back  as  olive-oil.  This 
trade  grew  to  be  so  formidable  that  Italy  was  obliged 
to  put  a  prohibitory  impost  upon  it  to  keep  it  from 
working  serious  injury  to  her  oil  industry. 

Helena  occupies  one  of  the  prettiest  situations  on 
the  Mississippi..  Her  perch  is  the  last,  the  southern- 
most group  of  hills  which  one  sees  on  that  side  of  the 
river.  In  its  normal  condition  it  is  a  pretty  town; 
but  the  flood  (or  possibly  the  seepage)  had  lately 
been  ravaging  it;  whole  streets  of  houses  had  been 
invaded  by  the  muddy  water,  and  the  outsides  of 
260 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

the  buildings  were  still  belted  with  a  broad  stain 
extending  upward  from  the  foundations.  Stranded 
and  discarded  scows  lay  all  about;  plank  sidewalks 
on  stilts  four  feet  high  were  still  standing;  the  broad 
sidewalks  on  the  ground  level  were  loose  and  ruinous 
— a  couple  of  men  trotting  along  them  could  make 
a  blind  man  think  a  cavalry  charge  was  coming; 
everywhere  the  mud  was  black  and  deep,  and  in 
many  places  malarious  pools  of  stagnant  water  were 
standing.  A  Mississippi  inundation  is  the  next 
most  wasting  and  desolating  infliction  to  a  fire. 

We  had  an  enjoyable  time  here,  on  this  sunny  Sun- 
day ;  two  full  hours'  liberty  ashore  while  the  boat  dis- 
charged freight.  In  the  back  streets  but  few  white 
people  were  visible,  but  there  were  plenty  of  colored 
folk — mainly  women  and  girls;  and  almost  without 
exception  upholstered  in  bright  new  clothes  of  swell 
and  elaborate  style  and  cut — a  glaring  and  hilarious 
contrast  to  the  mournful  mud  and  the  pensive  puddles. 

Helena  is  the  second  town  in  Arkansas,  in  point 
of  population — which  is  placed  at  five  thousand. 
The  country  about  it  is  exceptionally  productive. 
Helena  has  a  good  cotton  trade;  handles  from  forty 
to  sixty  thousand  bales  annually;  she  has  a  large 
lumber  and  grain  commerce;  has  a  foundry,  oil- 
mills,  machine  shops,  and  wagon  factories — in  brief, 
has  one  million  dollars  invested  in  manufacturing 
industries.  She  has  two  railways,  and  is  the  com- 
mercial center  of  a  broad  and  prosperous  region. 
Her  gross  receipts  of  money,  annually,  from  all 
sources,  are  placed  by  the  New  Orleans  Times- 
Democrat  at  four  million  dollars. 
261 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

A   THUMB-PRINT   AND   WHAT   CAME    OF   IT 

WE  were  approaching  Napoleon,  Arkansas.  So 
I  began  to  think  about  my  errand  there. 
Time,  noonday;  and  bright  and  sunny.  This  was 
bad — not  best,  anyway;  for  mine  was  not  (prefer- 
ably) a  noonday  kind  of  errand.  The  more  I 
thought,  the  more  that  fact  pushed  itself  upon  me 
— now  in  one  form,  now  in  another.  Finally,  it  took 
the  form  of  a  distinct  question :  Is  it  good  common 
sense  to  do  the  errand  in  daytime,  when  by  a  little 
sacrifice  of  comfort  and  inclination  you  can  have 
night  for  it,  and  no  inquisitive  eyes  around?  This 
settled  it.  Plain  question  and  plain  answer  make 
the  shortest  road  out  of  most  perplexities. 

I  got  my  friends  into  my  stateroom,  and  said  I 
was  sorry  to  create  annoyance  and  disappointment, 
but  that  upon  reflection  it  really  seemed  best  that 
we  put  our  luggage  ashore  and  stop  over  at  Napoleon. 
Their  disapproval  was  prompt  and  loud;  their  lan- 
guage mutinous.  Their  main  argument  was  one 
which  has  always  been  the  first  to  come  to  the  sur- 
face, in  such  cases,  since  the  beginning  of  time: 
"But  you  decided  and  agreed  to  stick  to  this  boat," 
etc. ;  as  if,  having  determined  to  do  an  unwise  thing, 
one  is  thereby  bound  to  go  ahead  and  make  two 
262 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

unwise  things  of  it,  by  carrying  out  that  determina- 
tion. I  tried  various  mollifying  tactics  upon  them, 
with  reasonably  good  success:  under  which  encour- 
agement I  increased  my  efforts;  and,  to  show  them 
that  I  had  not  created  this  annoying  errand,  and  was 
in  no  way  to  blame  for  it,  I  presently  drifted  into  its 
history — substantially  as  follows: 

Toward  the  end  of  last  year  I  spent  a  few  months 
in  Munich,  Bavaria.  In  November  I  was  living  in 
Fraulein  Dahlweiner's  pension,  la,  Karlstrasse;  but 
my  working  quarters  were  a  mile  from  there,  in  the 
house  of  a  widow  who  supported  herself  by  taking 
lodgers.  She  and  her  two  young  children  used  to 
drop  in  every  morning  and  talk  German  to  me — by 
request.  One  day,  during  a  ramble  about  the  city, 
I  visited  one  of  the  two  establishments  where  the 
government  keeps  and  watches  corpses  until  the 
doctors  decide  that  they  are  permanently  dead,  and 
not  in  a  trance  state.  It  was  a  grisly  place,  that 
spacious  room.  There  were  thirty-six  corpses  of 
adults  in  sight,  stretched  on  their  backs  on  slightly 
slanted  boards,  in  three  long  rows — all  of  them  with 
wax-white,  rigid  faces,  and  all  of  them  wrapped  in 
white  shrouds.  Along  the  sides  of  the  room  were 
deep  alcoves,  like  bay-windows ;  and  in  each  of  these 
lay  several  marble-visaged  babes,  utterly  hidden  and 
buried  under  banks  of  fresh  flowers,  all  but  their 
faces  and  crossed  hands.  Around  a  finger  of  each 
of  these  fifty  still  forms,  both  great  and  small,  was 
a  ring;  and  from  the  ring  a  wire  led  to  the  ceiling, 
and  thence  to  a  bell  in  a  watch-room  yonder,  where, 
day  and  night,  a  watchman  sits  always  alert  and 
263 


MARK    TWAIN 

ready  to  spring  to  the  aid  of  any  of  that  pallid  com- 
pany who,  waking  out  of  death,  shall  make  a  move- 
ment— for  any,  even  the  slightest,  movement  will 
twitch  the  wire  and  ring  that  fearful  bell.  I  im- 
agined myself  a  death-sentinel  drowsing  there  alone, 
far  in  the  dragging  watches  of  some  wailing,  gusty 
night,  and  having  in  a  twinkling  all  my  body  stricken 
to  quivering  jelly  by  the  sudden  clamor  of  that  awful 
summons!  So  I  inquired  about  this  thing;  asked 
what  resulted  usually?  if  the  watchman  died,  and 
the  restored  corpse  came  and  did  what  it  could  to 
make  his  last  moments  easy?  But  I  was  rebuked 
for  trying  to  feed  an  idle  and  frivolous  curiosity  in 
so  solemn  and  so  mournful  a  place;  and  went  my 
way  with  a  humbled  crest. 

Next  morning  I  was  telling  the  widow  my  adven- 
ture when  she  exclaimed: 

"Come  with  me!  I  have  a  lodger  who  shall  tell 
you  all  you  want  to  know.  He  has  been  a  night 
watchman  there." 

He  was  a  living  man,  but  he  did  not  look  it.  He 
was  abed  and  had  his  head  propped  high  on  pillows ; 
his  face  was  wasted  and  colorless,  his  deep-sunken 
eyes  were  shut;  his  hand,  lying  on  his  breast,  was 
talonlike,  it  was  so  bony  and  long-fingered.  The 
widow  began  her  introduction  of  me.  The  man's 
eyes  opened  slowly,  and  glittered  wickedly  out  from 
the  twilight  of  their  caverns;  he  frowned  a  black 
frown;  he  lifted  his  lean  hand  and  waved  us  per- 
emptorily away.  But  the  widow  kept  straight  on, 
till  she  had  got  out  the  fact  that  I  was  a  stranger  and 
an  American.  The  man's  face  changed  at  once, 
264 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

brightened,  became  even  eager — and  the  next  mo- 
ment he  and  I  were  alone  together. 

I  opened  up  in  cast-iron  German ;  he  responded  in 
quite  flexible  English ;  thereafter  we  gave  the  German 
language  a  permanent  rest. 

This  consumptive  and  I  became  good  friends.  I 
visited  him  every  day,  and  we  talked  about  every- 
thing. At  least,  about  everything  but  wives  and 
children.  Let  anybody's  wife  or  anybody's  child  be 
mentioned  and  three  things  always  followed:  the 
most  gracious  and  loving  and  tender  light  glimmered 
in  the  man's  eyes  for  a  moment;  faded  out  the  next, 
and  in  its  place  came  that  deadly  look  which  had 
flamed  there  the  first  time  I  ever  saw  his  lids  un- 
close; thirdly,  he  ceased  from  speech  there  and  then 
for  that  day,  lay  silent,  abstracted,  and  absorbed, 
apparently  heard  nothing  that  I  said,  took  no  notice 
of  my  good-bys,  and  plainly  did  not  know  by  either 
sight  or  hearing  when  I  left  the  room. 

When  I  had  been  this  Karl  Ritter's  daily  and 
sole  intimate  during  two  months,  he  one  day  said 
abruptly : 

"I  will  tell  you  my  story." 

A   DYING   MAN'S    CONFESSION 

Then  he  went  on  as  follows : 

"I  have  never  given  up  until  now.  But  now  I 
have  given  up.  I  am  going  to  die.  I  made  up  my 
mind  last  night  that  it  must  be,  and  very  soon,  too. 
You  say  you  are  going  to  revisit  your  river  by  and 
by,  when  you  find  opportunity.  Very  well;  that, 
together  with  a  certain  strange  experience  which  fell 
265 


MARK    TWAIN 

to  my  lot  last  night,  determines  me  to  tell  you  my 
history — for  you  will  see  Napoleon,  Arkansas,  and 
for  my  sake  you  will  stop  there  and  do  a  certain 
thing  for  me — a  thing  which  you  will  willingly  under- 
take after  you  shall  have  heard  my  narrative. 

"Let  us  shorten  the  story  wherever  we  can,  for 
it  will  need  it,  being  long.  You  already  know  how 
I  came  to  go  to  America,  and  how  I  came  to  settle 
in  that  lonely  region  in  the  South.  But  you  do  not 
know  that  I  had  a  wife.  My  wife  was  young,  beau- 
tiful, loving,  and  oh,  so  divinely  good  and  blameless 
and  gentle!  And  our  little  girl  was  her  mother  in 
miniature.  It  was  the  happiest  of  happy  house- 
holds. 

"One  night — it  was  toward  the  close  of  the  war — 
I  woke  up  out  of  a  sodden  lethargy,  and  found  myself 
bound  and  gagged,  and  the  air  tainted  with  chloro- 
form! I  saw  two  men  in  the  room,  and  one  was 
saying  to  the  other  in  a  hoarse  whisper:  'I  told  her 
I  would,  if  she  made  a  noise,  and  as  for  the  child — 

"The  other  man  interrupted  in  a  low,  half -crying 
voice : 

"'You  said  we'd  only  gag  them  and  rob  them, 
not  hurt  them,  or  I  wouldn't  have  come.' 

' ' '  Shut  up  your  whining ;  had  to  change  the  plan 
when  they  waked  up.  You  done  all  you  could  to 
protect  them,  now  let  that  satisfy  you.  Come,  help 
rummage.' 

"Both  men  were  masked  and  wore  coarse,  ragged 

'nigger'  clothes;  they  had  a  bull's-eye  lantern,  and 

by  its  light  I  noticed  that  the  gentler  robber  had  no 

thumb  on  his  right  hand.     They  rummaged  around 

266 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

my  poor  cabin  for  a  moment:  the  head  bandit  then 
said  in  his  stage  whisper: 

" 'It's  a  waste  of  time — he  shall  tell  where  it's  hid. 
Undo  his  gag  and  revive  him  up.' 

"The  other  said: 

'"All  right — provided  no  clubbing.' 

'"No  clubbing  it  is,  then — provided  he  keeps  still.' 

"They  approached  me.  Just  then  there  was  a 
sound  outside,  a  sound  of  voices  and  trampling  hoofs ; 
the  robbers  held  their  breath  and  listened ;  the  sounds 
came  slowly  nearer  and  nearer,  then  came  a  shout: 

' ' '  Hello,  the  house !  Show  a  light,  we  want  water. ' 
"The  captain's  voice,  by  G !'  said  the  stage- 
whispering  ruffian,  and  both  robbers  fled  by  the 
way  of  the  back  door,  shutting  off  their  bull's-eye 
as  they  ran. 

"The  stranger  shouted  several  times  more,  then 
rode  by — there  seemed  to  be  a  dozen  of  the  horses — 
and  I  heard  nothing  more. 

"I  struggled,  but  could  not  free  myself  from  my 
bonds.  I  tried  to  speak,  but  the  gag  was  effective, 
I  could  not  make  a  sound.  I  listened  for  my  wife's 
voice  and  my  child's — listened  long  and  intently,  but 
no  sound  came  from  the  other  end  of  the  room  where 
their  bed  was.  This  silence  became  more  and  more 
awful,  more  and  more  ominous,  every  moment. 
Could  you  have  endured  an  hour  of  it,  do  you  think  ? 
Pity  me,  then,  who  had  to  endure  three.  Three 
hours  ?  it  was  three  ages !  Whenever  the  clock  struck 
it  seemed  as  if  years  had  gone  by  since  I  had  heard 
it  last.  All  this  time  I  was  struggling  in  my  bonds, 
and  at  last,  about  dawn,  I  got  myself  free  and  rose 
267 


MARK     TWAIN 

up  and  stretched  my  stiff  limbs.  I  was  able  to  dis- 
tinguish details  pretty  well.  The  floor  was  littered 
with  things  thrown  there  by  the  robbers  during  their 
search  for  my  savings.  The  first  object  that  caught 
my  particular  attention  was  a  document  of  mine 
which  I  had  seen  the  rougher  of  the  two  ruffians 
glance  at  and  then  cast  away.  It  had  blood  on  it! 
I  staggered  to  the  other  end  of  the  room.  Oh,  poor 
unoffending,  helpless  ones,  there  they  lay;  their 
troubles  ended,  mine  begun! 

' '  Did  I  appeal  to  the  law — I  ?  Does  it  quench  the 
pauper's  thirst  if  the  king  drink  for  him?  Oh,  no, 
no,  no !  I  wanted  no  impertinent  interference  of  the 
law.  Laws  and  the  gallows  could  not  pay  the  debt 
that  was  owing  to  me !  Let  the  laws  leave  the  mat- 
ter in  my  hands,  and  have  no  fears :  I  would  find  the 
debtor  and  collect  the  debt.  How  accomplish  this, 
do  you  say?  How  accomplish  it  and  feel  so  sure 
about  it,  when  I  had  neither  seen  the  robbers'  faces, 
nor  heard  their  natural  voices,  nor  had  any  idea  who 
they  might  be?  Nevertheless,  I  was  sure — quite 
sure,  quite  confident.  I  had  a  clue — a  clue  which 
you  would  not  have  valued — a  clue  which  would  not 
have  greatly  helped  even  a  detective,  since  he  would 
lack  the  secret  of  how  to  apply  it.  I  shall  come  to 
that  presently — you  shall  see.  Let  us  go  on  now, 
taking  things  in  their  due  order.  There  was  one 
circumstance  which  gave  me  a  slant  in  a  definite 
direction  to  begin  with:  Those  two  robbers  were 
manifestly  soldiers  in  tramp  disguise,  and  not  new 
to  military  service,  but  old  in  it — regulars,  perhaps; 
they  did  not  acquire  their  soldierly  attitude,  gestures, 
268 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

carriage,  in  a  day,  nor  a  month,  nor  yet  in  a  year. 
So  I  thought,  but  said  nothing.  And  one  of  them 

had  said,  'The  captain's  voice,  by  G !' — the  one 

whose  life  I  would  have.  Two  miles  away  several 
regiments  were  in  camp,  and  two  companies  of  U.  S. 
cavalry.  When  I  learned  that  Captain  Blakely  of 
Company  C  had  passed  our  way  that  night  with  an 
escort  I  said  nothing,  but  in  that  company  I  resolved 
to  seek  my  man.  In  conversation  I  studiously  and 
persistently  described  the  robbers  as  tramps,  camp 
followers;  and  among  this  class  the  people  made 
useless  search,  none  suspecting  the  soldiers  but  me. 

"Working  patiently  by  night  in  my  desolated 
home,  I  made  a  disguise  for  myself  out  of  various 
odds  and  ends  of  clothing;  in  the  nearest  village  I 
bought  a  pair  of  blue  goggles.  By  and  by,  when  the 
military  camp  broke  up,  and  Company  C  was  ordered 
a  hundred  miles  north,  to  Napoleon,  I  secreted  my 
small  hoard  of  money  in  my  belt  and  took  my  de- 
parture in  the  night.  When  Company  C  arrived  in 
Napoleon  I  was  already  there.  Yes,  I  was  there, 
with  a  new  trade — fortune-teller.  Not  to  seem 
partial,  I  made  friends  and  told  fortunes  among  all 
the  companies  garrisoned  there,  but  I  gave  Company 
C  the  great  bulk  of  my  attentions.  I  made  myself 
limitlessly  obliging  to  these  particular  men;  they 
could  ask  me  no  favor,  put  on  me  no  risk  which  I 
would  decline.  I  became  the  willing  butt  of  their 
jokes;  this  perfected  my  popularity;  I  became  a 
favorite. 

"I  early  found  a  private  who  lacked  a  thumb — 
what  joy  it  was  to  me!  And  when  I  found  that  he 
269 


MARK    TWAIN 

alone,  of  all  the  company,  had  lost  a  thumb,  my  last 
misgiving  vanished;  I  was  sure  I  was  on  the  right 
track.  This  man's  name  was  Kruger,  a  German. 
There  were  nine  Germans  in  the  company.  I 
watched  to  see  who  might  be  his  intimates,  but  he 
seemed  to  have  no  especial  intimates.  But  I  was 
his  intimate,  and  I  took  care  to  make  the  intimacy 
grow.  Sometimes  I  so  hungered  for  my  revenge  that 
I  could  hardly  restrain  myself  from  going  on  my 
knees  and  begging  him  to  point  out  the  man  who 
had  murdered  my  wife  and  child,  but  I  managed  to 
bridle  my  tongue.  I  bided  my  time  and  went  on 
telling  fortunes,  as  opportunity  offered. 

"My  apparatus  was  simple:  a  little  red  paint  and 
a  bit  of  white  paper.  I  painted  the  ball  of  the 
client's  thumb,  took  a  print  of  it  on  the  paper, 
studied  it  that  night,  and  revealed  his  fortune  to  him 
next  day.  What  was  my  idea  in  this  nonsense?  It 
was  this :  When  I  was  a  youth,  I  knew  an  old  French- 
man who  had  been  a  prison-keeper  for  thirty  years, 
and  he  told  me  that  there  was  one  thing  about  a 
person  which  never  changed,  from  the  cradle  to  the 
grave — the  lines  in  the  ball  of  the  thumb;  and  he 
said  that  these  lines  were  never  exactly  alike  in  the 
thumbs  of  any  two  human  beings.  In  these  days, 
we  photograph  the  new  criminal,  and  hang  his  pic- 
ture in  the  Rogues'  Gallery  for  future  reference;  but 
that  Frenchman,  in  his  day,  used  to  take  a  print  of 
the  ball  of  a  new  prisoner's  thumb  and  put  that  away 
for  future  reference.  He  always  said  that  pictures 
were  no  good — future  disguises  could  make  them 
useless.  'The  thumb's  the  only  sure  thing,'  said  he; 
270 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

'you  can't  disguise  that.'  And  he  used  to  prove  his 
theory,  too,  on  my  friends  and  acquaintances;  it 
always  succeeded. 

"I  went  on  telling  fortunes.  Every  night  I  shut 
myself  in,  all  alone,  and  studied  the  day's  thumb- 
prints  with  a  magnifying-glass.  Imagine  the  de- 
vouring eagerness  with  which  I  poured  over  those 
mazy  red  spirals,  with  that  document  by  my  side 
which  bore  the  right-hand  thumb  and  finger-marks 
of  that  unknown  murderer,  printed  with  the  dearest 
blood — to  me — that  was  ever  shed  on  this  earth! 
And  many  and  many  a  time  I  had  to  repeat  the 
same  old  disappointed  remark,  'Will  they  never  cor- 
respond ! ' 

"But  my  reward  came  at  last.  It  was  the  print 
of  the  thumb  of  the  forty-third  man  of  Company  C 
whom  I  had  experimented  on — Private  Franz  Adler. 
An  hour  before  I  did  not  know  the  murderer's  name, 
or  voice,  or  figure,  or  face,  or  nationality;  but  now 
I  knew  all  these  things!  I  believed  I  might  feel 
sure;  the  Frenchman's  repeated  demonstrations  be- 
ing so  good  a  warranty.  Still,  there  was  a  way  to 
make  sure.  I  had  an  impression  of  Kruger's  left 
thumb.  In  the  morning  I  took  him  aside  when  he 
was  off  duty;  and  when  we  were  out  of  sight  and 
hearing  of  witnesses,  I  said  impressively: 

"'A  part  of  your  fortune  is  so  grave  that  I  thought 
it  would  be  better  for  you  if  I  did  not  tell  it  in 
public.  You  and  another  man,  whose  fortune  I  was 
studying  last  night — Private  Adler — have  been  mur- 
dering a  woman  and  a  child !  You  are  being  dogged. 
Within  five  days  both  of  you  will  be  assassinated.' 
271 


MARK    TWAIN 

"He  dropped  on  his  knees,  frightened  out  of  his 
wits;  and  for  five  minutes  he  kept  pouring  cut  the 
same  set  of  words,  like  a  demented  person,  and  in 
the  same  half-crying  way  which  was  one  of  my 
memories  of  that  murderous  night  in  my  cabin: 

'"I  didn't  do  it;  upon  my  soul  I  didn't  do  it;  and 
I  tried  to  keep  him  from  doing  it.  I  did,  as  God  i? 
my  witness.  He  did  it  alone.' 

"This  was  all  I  wanted.  And  I  tried  to  get  rid 
of  the  fool;  but  no,  he  clung  to  me,  imploring  me  to 
save  him  from  the  assassin.  He  said: 

'"I  have  money— ten  thousand  dollars — hid  away, 
the  fruit  of  loot  and  thievery ;  save  me — tell  me  what 
to  do,  and  you  shall  have  it,  every  penny.  Two- 
thirds  of  it  is  my  cousin  Adler's;  but  you  can  take 
it  all.  We  hid  it  when  we  first  came  here.  But  I 
hid  it  in  a  new  place  yesterday,  and  have  not  told 
him — shall  not  tell  him.  I  was  going  to  desert,  and 
get  away  with  it  all.  It  is  gold,  and  too  heavy  to 
carry  when  one  is  running  and  dodging ;  but  a  woman 
who  has  been  gone  over  the  river  two  days  to  pre- 
pare my  way  for  me  is  going  to  follow  me  with  it; 
and  if  I  got  no  chance  to  describe  the  hiding-place 
to  her  I  was  going  to  slip  my  silver  watch  into  her 
hand,  or  send  it  to  her,  and  she  would  understand. 
There's  a  piece  of  paper  in  the  back  of  the  case 
which  tells  it  all.  Here,  take  the  watch — tell  me 
what  to  do!' 

"He  was  trying  to  press  his  watch  upon  me,  and 
was  exposing  the  paper  and  explaining  it  to  me, 
when  Adler  appeared  on  the  scene,  about  a  dozen 
yards  away.     I  said  to  poor  Kruger: 
272 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

'"Put  up  your  watch,  I  don't  want  it.  You 
sha'n't  come  to  any  harm.  Go,  now.  I  must  tell 
Adler  his  fortune.  Presently  I  will  tell  you  how  to 
escape  the  assassin ;  meantime  I  shall  have  to  examine 
your  thumb-mark  again.  Say  nothing  to  Adler 
about  this  thing — say  nothing  to  anybody.' 

"He  went  away  filled  with  fright  and  gratitude, 
poor  devil!  I  told  Adler  a  long  fortune — purposely 
so  long  that  I  could  not  finish  it;  promised  to  come 
to  him  on  guard,  that  night,  and  tell  him  the  really 
important  part  of  it — the  tragical  part  of  it,  I  said 
— so  must  be  out  of  reach  of  eavesdroppers.  They 
always  kept  a  picket-watch  outsids  the  town — mere 
discipline  and  ceremony — no  occasion  for  it,  no 
enemy  around. 

"Toward  midnight  I  set  out,  equipped  with  the 
countersign,  and  picked  my  way  toward  the  lonely 
region  where  Adler  was  to  keep  his  watch.  It  was 
so  dark  that  I  stumbled  right  on  a  dim  figure  almost 
before  I  could  get  out  a  protecting  word.  The  senti- 
nel hailed  and  I  answered,  both  at  the  same  moment. 
I  added,  'It's  only  me — the  fortune-teller.'  Then  I 
slipped  to  the  poor  devil's  side,  and  without  a  word 
I  drove  my  dirk  into  his  heart!  'Ja  wohl,'  laughed 
I,  'it  was  the  tragedy  part  of  his  fortune,  indeed!' 
As  he  fell  from  his  horse  he  clutched  at  me,  and  my 
blue  goggles  remained  in  his  hand;  and  away  plunged 
the  beast,  dragging  him  with  his  foot  in  the  stirrup. 

"I  fled  through  the  woods  and  made  good  my 
escape,  leaving  the  accusing  goggles  behind  me  in 
that  dead  man's  hand. 

"This  was  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  ago.  Since  then 
273 


MARK    TWAIN 

I  have  wandered  aimlessly  about  the  earth,  some- 
times at  work,  sometimes  idle;  sometimes  with 
money,  sometimes  with  none ;  but  always  tired  of  life, 
and  wishing  it  was  done,  for  my  mission  here  was 
finished  with  the  act  of  that  night;  and  the  only 
pleasure,  solace,  satisfaction  I  had,  in  all  those  tedious 
years,  was  in  the  daily  reflection,  '  I  have  killed  him ! ' 
"Four  years  ago  my  health  began  to  fail.  I  had 
wandered  into  Munich,  in  my  purposeless  way. 
Being  out  of  money  I  sought  work,  and  got  it;  did 
my  duty  faithfully  about  a  year,  and  was  then  given 
the  berth  of  night  watchman  yonder  in  that  dead- 
house  which  you  visited  lately.  The  place  suited 
my  mood.  I  liked  it.  I  liked  being  with  the  dead — 
liked  being  alone  with  them.  I  used  to  wander 
among  those  rigid  corpses,  and  peer  into  their  austere 
faces,  by  the  hour.  The  later  the  time,  the  more 
impressive  it  was;  I  preferred  the  late  time.  Some- 
times I  turned  the  lights  low;  this  gave  perspective, 
you  see;  and  the  imagination  could  play;  always,  the 
dim,  receding  ranks  of  the  dead  inspired  one  with 
weird  and  fascinating  fancies.  Two  years  ago — I 
had  been  there  a  year  then — I  was  sitting  all  alone 
in  the  watch-room,  one  gusty  winter's  night,  chilled, 
numb,  comfortless;  drowsing  gradually  into  uncon- 
sciousness ;  the  sobbing  of  the  wind  and  the  slamming 
of  distant  shutters  falling  fainter  and  fainter  upon 
my  dulling  ear  each  moment,  when  sharp  and  sud- 
denly that  dead-bell  rang  out  a  blood-curdling 
alarum  over  my  head!  The  shock  of  it  nearly 
paralyzed  me;  for  it  was  the  first  time  I  had  ever 
heard  it. 

274 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

"I  gathered  myself  together  and  flew  to  the 
corpse-room.  About  midway  down  the  outside  rank, 
a  shrouded  figure  was  sitting  upright,  wagging  its 
head  slowly  from  one  side  to  the  other — a  grisly 
spectacle!  Its  side  was  toward  me.  I  hurried  to  it 
and  peered  into  its  face.  Heavens,  it  was  Adler! 

' '  Can  you  divine  what  my  first  thought  was  ?  Put 
into  words,  it  was  this:  'It  seems,  then,  you  escaped 
me  once:  there  will  be  a  different  result  this  time!' 

"Evidently  this  creature  was  suffering  unimagi- 
nable terrors.  Think  what  it  must  have  been  to 
wake  up  in  the  midst  of  that  voiceless  hush,  and  look 
out  over  that  grim  congregation  of  the  dead !  What 
gratitude  shone  in  his  skinny  white  face  when  he 
saw  a  living  form  before  him!  And  how  the  fer- 
vency of  this  mute  gratitude  was  augmented  when 
his  eyes  fell  upon  the  life-giving  cordials  which  I 
carried  in  my  hands!  Then  imagine  the  horror 
which  came  into  his  pinched  face  when  I  put  the 
cordials  behind  me,  and  said  mockingly: 

'"Speak  up,  Franz  Adler — call  upon  these  dead! 
Doubtless  they  will  listen  and  have  pity;  but  here 
there  is  none  else  that  will.' 

"He  tried  to  speak,  but  that  part  of  the  shroud 
which  bound  his  jaws  held  firm,  and  would  not  let 
him.  He  tried  to  lift  imploring  hands,  but  they 
were  crossed  upon  his  breast  and  tied.  I  said: 

"'Shout,  Franz  Adler;  make  the  sleepers  in  the 
distant  streets  hear  you  and  bring  help.  Shout — 
and  lose  no  time,  for  there  is  little  to  lose.  What, 
you  cannot?  That  is  a  pity;  but  it  is  no  matter — 
it  does  not  always  bring  help.  When  you  and  your 
275 


MARK     TWAIN 

cousin  murdered  a  helpless  woman  and  child  in  a 
cabin  in  Arkansas — my  wife,  it  was,  and  my  child! 
— they  shrieked  for  help,  you  remember;  but  it  did 
no  good;  you  remember  that  it  did  no  good,  is  it 
not  so?  Your  teeth  chatter — then  why  cannot  you 
shout?  Loosen  the  bandages  with  your  hands — 
then  you  can.  Ah,  I  see — your  hands  are  tied,  they 
cannot  aid  you.  How  strangely  things  repeat  them- 
selves, after  long  years ;  for  my  hands  were  tied,  that 
night,  you  remember?  Yes,  tied  much  as  yours  are 
now — how  odd  that  is!  I  could  not  pull  free.  It 
did  not  occur  to  you  to  untie  me;  it  does  not  occur 
to  me  to  untie  you.  'Sh — !  there's  a  late  footstep. 
It  is  coming  this  way.  Hark,  how  near  it  is!  One 
can  count  the  footfalls — one — two — three.  There — 
it  is  just  outside.  Now  is  the  time!  Shout,  man, 
shout!  it  is  the  one  sole  chance  between  you  and 
eternity!  Ah,  you  see  you  have  delayed  too  long — 
it  is  gone  by.  There — it  is  dying  out.  It  is  gone! 
Think  of  it — reflect  upon  it — you  have  heard  a 
human  footstep  for  the  last  time.  How  curious  it 
must  be,  to  listen  to  so  common  a  sound  as  that  and 
know  that  one  will  never  hear  the  fellow  to  it  again.' 

"Oh,  my  friend,  the  agony  in  that  shrouded  face 
was  ecstasy  to  see !  I  thought  of  a  new  torture,  and 
applied  it — assisting  myself  with  a  trifle  of  lying 
invention : 

"'That  poor  Kruger  tried  to  save  my  wife  and 
child,  and  I  did  him  a  grateful  good  turn  for  it 
when  the  time  came.  I  persuaded  him  to  rob  you; 
and  I  and  a  woman  helped  him  to  desert,  and  got 
him  away  in  safety.' 

276 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

"A  look  as  of  surprise  and  triumph  shone  out 
dimly  through  the  anguish  in  my  victim's  face.  I 
was  disturbed,  disquieted.  I  said: 

"  'What,  then — didn't  he  escape?' 

"A  negative  shake  of  the  head. 

"'No?    What  happened,  then?' 

The  satisfaction  in  the  shrouded  face  was  still 
plainer.  The  man  tried  to  mumble  out  some  words 
— could  not  succeed;  tried  to  express  something  with 
his  obstructed  hands — failed;  paused  a  moment,  then 
feebly  tilted  his  head,  in  a  meaning  way,  toward  the 
corpse  that  lay  nearest  him. 

"'Dead?'  I  asked.  'Failed  to  escape?  caught  in 
the  act  and  shot?' 

' '  Negative  shake  of  the  head. 

'"How,  then?' 

"Again  the  man  tried  to  do  something  with  his 
hands.  I  watched  closely,  but  could  not  guess  the 
intent.  I  bent  over  and  watched  still  more  intently. 
He  had  twisted  a  thumb  around  and  was  weakly 
punching  at  his  breast  with  it. 

"'Ah — stabbed,  do  you  mean?' 

"Affirmative  nod,  accompanied  by  a  spectral  smile 
of  such  devilishness  that  it  struck  an  awakening  light 
through  my  dull  brain,  and  I  cried : 

"'Did  /  stab  him,  mistaking  him  for  you?  for 
that  stroke  was  meant  for  none  but  you." 

"The  affirmative  nod  of  the  re-dying  rascal  was 
as  joyous  as  his  failing  strength  was  able  to  put  into 
its  expression. 

"'Oh,  miserable,  miserable  me,  to  slaughter  the 
pitying  soul  that  stood  a  friend  to  my  darlings  when 
277 


MARK     TWAIN 

they  were  helpless,  and  would  have  saved  them  if 
he  could!  miserable,  oh,  miserable,  miserable  me!' 

' '  I  fancied  I  heard  the  muffled  gurgle  of  a  mock- 
ing laugh.  I  took  my  face  out  of  my  hands,  and 
saw  my  enemy  sinking  back  upon  his  inclined 
board. 

"He  was  a  satisfactory  long  time  dying.  He  had 
a  wonderful  vitality,  an  astonishing  constitution. 
Yes,  he  was  a  pleasant  long  time  at  it.  I  got  a  chair 
and  a  newspaper,  and  sat  down  by  him  and  read. 
Occasionally  I  took  a  sip  of  brandy.  This  was 
necessary,  on  account  of  the  cold.  But  I  did  it 
partly  because  I  saw  that,  along  at  first,  whenever 
I  reached  for  the  bottle,  he  thought  I  was  going  to 
give  him  some.  I  read  aloud:  mainly  imaginary 
accounts  of  people  snatched  from  the  grave's  thresh- 
old and  restored  to  life  and  vigor  by  a  few  spoonfuls 
of  liquor  and  a  warm  bath.  Yes,  he  had  a  long, 
hard  death  of  it — three  hours  and  six  minutes,  from 
the  time  he  rang  his  bell. 

'  Tt  is  believed  that  in  all  these  eighteen  years  that 
have  elapsed  since  the  institution  of  the  corpse- 
watch,  no  shrouded  occupant  of  the  Bavarian  dead- 
houses  has  ever  rung  its  bell.  Well,  it  is  a  harmless 
belief.  Let  it  stand  at  that. 

"The  chill  of  that  death-room  had  penetrated  my 
bones.  It  revived  and  fastened  upon  me  the  dis- 
ease which  had  been  afflicting  me,  but  which,  up  to 
that  night,  had  been  steadily  disappearing.  That 
man  murdered  my  wife  and  my  child;  and  in  three 
days  hence  he  will  have  added  me  to  his  list.  No 
matter — God!  how  delicious  the  memory  of  it!  I 
278 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

caught  him  escaping  from  his  grave,  and  thrust  him 
back  into  it ! 

"After  that  night  I  was  confined  to  my  bed  for  a 
week;  but  as  soon  as  I  could  get  about  I  went  to 
the  dead-house  books  and  got  the  number  of  the 
house  which  Adler  had  died  in.  A  wretched  lodging- 
house  it  was.  It  was  my  idea  that  he  would  natu- 
rally have  gotten  hold  of  Kruger's  effects,  being  his 
cousin;  and  I  wanted  to  get  Kruger's  watch,  if  I 
could.  But  while  I  was  sick,  Adler's  things  had  been 
sold  and  scattered,  all  except  a  few  old  letters,  and 
some  odds  and  ends  of  no  value.  However,  through 
those  letters  I  traced  out  a  son  of  Kruger's,  the  only 
relative  he  left.  He  is  a  man  of  thirty,  now,  a  shoe- 
maker by  trade,  and  living  at  No.  14  Konigstrasse, 
Mannheim — widower,  with  several  small  children. 
Without  explaining  to  him  why,  I  have  furnished 
two- thirds  of  his  support  ever  since. 

"Now,  as  to  that  watch — see  how  strangely  things 
happen !  I  traced  it  around  and  about  Germany  for 
more  than  a  year,  at  considerable  cost  in  money  and 
vexation;  and  at  last  I  got  it.  Got  it,  and  was  un- 
speakably glad;  opened  it,  and  found  nothing  in  it! 
Why,  I  might  have  known  that  that  bit  of  paper 
was  not  going  to  stay  there  all  this  time.  Of  course 
I  gave  up  that  ten  thousand  dollars  then;  gave  it 
up,  and  dropped  it  out  of  my  mind;  and  most  sorrow- 
fully, for  I  had  wanted  it  for  Kruger's  son. 

"Last  night,  when  I  consented  at  last  that  I  must 

die,  I  began  to  make  ready.     I  proceeded  to  burn 

all  useless  papers;  and  sure  enough,  from  a  batch  of 

Adler's,  not  previously  examined  with  thoroughness, 

279 


MARK    TWAIN 

out  dropped  that  long-desired  scrap!    I  recognized 
it  in  a  moment.     Here  it  is — I  will  translate  it : 

"Brick  livery  stable,  stone  foundation,  middle  of  town,  corner 
of  Orleans  and  Market.  Corner  toward  Court-house.  Third 
stone,  fourth  row.  Stick  notice  there,  saying  how  many  are 
to  come. 

"There — take  it,  and  preserve  it!  Kruger  ex- 
plained that  that  stone  was  removable;  and  that  it 
was  in  the  north  wall  of  the  foundation,  fourth  row 
from  the  top,  and  third  stone  from  the  west.  The 
money  is  secreted  behind  it.  He  said  the  closing 
sentence  was  a  blind,  to  mislead  in  case  the  paper 
should  fall  into  wrong  hands.  It  probably  per- 
formed that  office  for  Adler. 

"Now  I  want  to  beg  that  when  you  make  your 
intended  journey  down  the  river,  you 'will  hunt  out 
that  hidden  money,  and  send  it  to  Adam  Kruger, 
care  of  the  Mannheim  address  which  I  have  men- 
tioned. It  will  make  a  rich  man  of  him,  and  I  shall 
sleep  the  sounder  in  my  grave  for  knowing  that  I 
have  done  what  I  could  for  the  son  of  the  man  who 
tried  to  save  my  wife  and  child — albeit  my  hand 
ignorantly  struck  him  down,  whereas  the  impulse  of 
my  heart  would  have  been  to  shield  and  serve  him." 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

THE    DISPOSAL   OF   A    BONANZA 

UCH  was  Hitter's  narrative,"  said  I  to  my  two 
friends.  There  was  a  profound  and  impres- 
sive silence,  which  lasted  a  considerable  time;  then 
both  men  broke  into  a  fusillade  of  excited  and  ad- 
miring ejaculations  over  the  strange  incidents  of  the 
tale :  and  this,  along  with  a  rattling  fire  of  questions, 
was  kept  up  until  all  hands  were  about  out  of  breath. 
Then  my  friends  began  to  cool  down,  and  draw  off, 
under  shelter  of  occasional  volleys,  into  silence  and 
abysmal  revery.  For  ten  minutes,  now,  there  was 
stillness.  Then  Rogers  said  dreamily: 

"Ten  thousand  dollars!"  Adding,  after  a  con- 
siderable pause': 

"Ten  thousand.     It  is  a  heap  of  money." 

Presently  the  poet  inquired: 

"Are  you  going  to  send  it  to  him  right  away?" 

"Yes,"  I  said.     "It  is  a  queer  question." 

No  reply.    After  a  little,  Rogers  asked  hesitatingly  : 

"Allot  it?    That  is— I  mean—' ' 

"Certainly,  all  of  it." 

I  was  going  to  say  more,  but  stopped — was  stopped 

by  a  train  of  thought   which  started  up  in  me. 

Thompson  spoke,  but  my  mind  was  absent  and  I  did 

not  catch  what  he  said.     But  I  heard  Rogers  answer: 

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MARK     TWAIN 

"Yet,  it  seems  so  to  me.  It  ought  to  be  quite 
sufficient ;  for  I  don't  see  that  he  has  done  anything. ' ' 

Presently  the  poet  said: 

"When  you  come  to  look  at  it,  it  is  more  than 
sufficient.  Just  look  at  it — five  thousand  dollars! 
Why,  he  couldn't  spend  it  in  a  lifetime!  And  it 
would  injure  him,  too;  perhaps  ruin  him — you  want 
to  look  at  that.  In  a  little  while  he  would  throw  his 
last  away,  shut  up  his  shop,  maybe  take  to  drinking, 
maltreat  his  motherless  children,  drift  into  other  evil 
courses,  go  steadily  from  bad  to  worse — " 

"Yes,  that's  it,"  interrupted  Rogers  fervently, 
"I've  seen  it  a  hundred  times — yes,  more  than  a 
hundred.  You  put  money  into  the  hands  of  a  man 
like  that,  if  you  want  to  destroy  him,  that's  all. 
Just  put  money  into  his  hands,  it's  all  you've  got  to 
do;  and  if  it  don't  pull  him  down,  and  take  all  the 
usefulness  out  of  him,  and  all  the  self-respect  and 
everything,  then  I  don't  know  human  nature — ain't 
that  so,  Thompson?  And  even  if  we  were  to  give 
him  a  third  of  it;  why,  in  less  than  six  months — " 

"Less  than  six  weeks,  you'd  better  say!"  said  I, 
warming  up  and  breaking  in.  "Unless  he  had  that 
three  thousand  dollars  in  safe  hands  where  he 
couldn't  touch  it,  he  would  no  more  last  you  six 
weeks  than — " 

"Of  course  he  wouldn't!"  said  Thompson.  "I've 
edited  books  for  that  kind  of  people;  and  the  mo- 
ment they  get  their  hands  on  the  royalty — maybe 
it's  three  thousand,  maybe  it's  two  thousand — " 

"What  business  has  that  shoemaker  with  two 
thousand  dollars,  I  should  like  to  know?"  broke  in 
282 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

Rogers  earnestly.  "A  man  perhaps  perfectly  con- 
tented now,  there  in  Mannheim,  surrounded  by  his 
own  class,  eating  his  bread  with  the  appetite  which 
laborious  industry  alone  can  give,  enjoying  his 
humble  life,  honest,  upright,  pure  in  heart,  and 
blest! — yes,  I  say  blest!  above  all  the  myriads  that 
go  in  silk  attire  and  walk  the  empty,  artificial  round 
of  social  folly — but  just  you  put  that  temptation 
before  him  once !  just  you  lay  fifteen  hundred  dollars 
before  a  man  like  that,  and  say — " 

"Fifteen  hundred  devils!"  cried  I.  "Five  hun- 
dred would  rot  his  principles,  paralyze  his  industry, 
drag  him  to  the  rumshop,  thence  to  the  gutter, 
thence  to  the  almshouse,  thence  to — " 

"Why  put  upon  ourselves  this  crime,  gentlemen?" 
interrupted  the  poet  earnestly  and  appealingly. 
"He  is  happy  where  he  is,  and  as  he  is.  Every  senti- 
ment of  honor,  every  sentiment  of  charity,  every 
sentiment  of  high  and  sacred  benevolence  warns  us, 
beseeches  us,  commands  us  to  leave  him  undis- 
turbed. That  is  real  friendship,  that  is  true  friend- 
ship. We  could  follow  other  courses  that  would  be 
more  showy ;  but  none  that  would  be  so  truly  kind 
and  wise,  depend  upon  it." 

After  some  further  talk,  it  became  evident  that 
each  of  us,  down  in  his  heart,  felt  some  misgivings 
over  this  settlement  of  the  matter.  It  was  manifest 
that  we  all  felt  that  we  ought  to  send  the  poor  shoe- 
maker something.  There  was  long  and  thoughtful 
discussion  of  this  point,  and  we  finally  decided  to 
send  him  a  chromo. 

Well,  now  that  everything  seemed  to  be  arranged 
283 


MARK     TWAIN 

satisfactorily  to  everybody  concerned,  a  new  trouble 
broke  out:  it  transpired  that  these  two  men  were 
expecting  to  share  equally  in  the  money  with  me. 
That  was  not  my  idea.  I  said  that  if  they  got  half 
of  it  between  them  they  might  consider  themselves 
lucky.  Rogers  said: 

"Who  would  have  had  any  if  it  hadn't  been  for 
me?  I  flung  out  the  first  hint — but  for  that  it 
would  all  have  gone  to  the  shoemaker." 

Thompson  said  that  he  was  thinking  of  the  thing 
himself  at  the  very  moment  that  Rogers  had  origi- 
nally spoken. 

I  retorted  that  the  idea  would  have  occurred  to 
me  plenty  soon  enough,  and  without  anybody's  help. 
I  was  slow  about  thinking,  maybe,  but  I  was  sure. 

This  matter  warmed  up  into  a  quarrel;  then  into 
a  fight;  and  each  man  got  pretty  badly  battered. 
As  soon  as  I  got  myself  mended  up  after  a  fashion, 
I  ascended  to  the  hurricane-deck  in  a  pretty  sour 
humor.  I  found  Captain  McCord  there,  and  said, 
as  pleasantly  as  my  humor  would  permit: 

"I  have  come  to  say  good-by,  captain.  I  wish  to 
go  ashore  at  Napoleon." 

"Go  ashore  where?" 

"Napoleon." 

The  captain  laughed;  but  seeing  that  I  was  not 
in  a  jovial  mood,  stopped  that  and  said: 

"But  are  you  serious?" 

"Serious?     I  certainly  am." 

The  captain  glanced  up  at  the  pilot-house  and 
said: 

"He  wants  to  get  off  at  Napoleon!" 
284 


LIFE    ON    THE    MISSISSIPPI 

"Napoleon?" 

"That's  what  he  says." 

"Great  Cassar's  ghost!" 

Uncle  Mumford  approached  along  the  deck.  The 
captain  said : 

"Uncle,  here's  a  friend  of  yours  wants  to  get  off 
at  Napoleon!" 

"Well,  by !" 

I  said: 

"Come,  what  is  all  this  about?  Can't  a  man  go 
ashore  at  Napoleon,  if  he  wants  to?" 

"Why,  hang  it,  don't  you  know?  There  isn't  any 
Napoleon  any  more.  Hasn't  been  for  years  and 
years.  The  Arkansas  River  burst  through  it,  tore 
it  all  to  rags,  and  emptied  it  into  the  Mississippi!" 

' '  Carried  the  whole  town  away  ?  Banks,  churches, 
jails,  newspaper  offices,  court-house,  theater,  fire 
department,  livery  stable — everything?" 

"Everything!  Just  a  fifteen-minute  job,  or  such 
a  matter.  Didn't  leave  hide  nor  hair,  shred  nor 
shingle  of  it,  except  the  fag-end  of  a  shanty  and  one 
brick  chimney.  This  boat  is  paddling  along  right 
now  where  the  dead-center  of  that  town  used  to  be; 
yonder  is  the  brick  chimney — all  that's  left  of  Na- 
poleon. These  dense  woods  on  the  right  used  to  be 
a  mile  back  of  the  town.  Take  a  look  behind  you 
— up-stream — now  you  begin  to  recognize  this  coun- 
try, don't  you?" 

4 '  Yes,  I  do  recognize  it  now.  It  is  the  most  won- 
derful thing  I  ever  heard  of ;  by  a  long  shot  the  most 
wonderful — and  unexpected." 

Mr.  Thompson  and  Mr.  Rogers  had  arrived,  mean- 
285 


MARK     TWAIN 

time,  with  satchels  and  umbrellas,  and  had  silently 
listened  to  the  captain's  news.  Thompson  put  a 
half-dollar  in  my  hand  and  said  softly: 

"For  my  share  of  the  chromo." 

Rogers  followed  suit. 

Yes,  it  was  an  astonishing  thing  to  see  the  Missis- 
sippi rolling  between  unpeopled  shores  and  straight 
over  the  spot  where  I  used  to  see  a  good  big  self- 
complacent  town  twenty  years  ago.  Town  that  was 
county-seat  of  a  great  and  important  county;  town 
with  a  big  United  States  marine  hospital;  town  of 
innumerable  fights — an  inquest  every  day;  town 
where  I  had  used  to  know  the  prettiest  girl,  and  the 
most  accomplished,  in  the  whole  Mississippi  valley; 
town  where  we  were  handed  the  first  printed  news 
of  the  Pennsylvania's  mournful  disaster  a  quarter  of 
a  century  ago ;  a  town  no  more — swallowed  up,  van- 
ished, gone  to  feed  the  fishes;  nothing  left  but  a 
fragment  of  a  shanty  and  a  crumbling  brick  chimney ! 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

REFRESHMENTS   AND   ETHICS 

IN  regard  to  Island  74,  which  is  situated  not  far 
from  the  former  Napoleon,  a  freak  of  the  river 
here  has  sorely  perplexed  the  laws  of  men  and  made 
them  a  vanity  and  a  jest.  When  the  state  of  Arkan- 
sas was  chartered,  she  controlled  "to  the  center  of 
the  river"  —  a  most  unstable  line.  The  state  of 
Mississippi  claimed  "to  the  channel" — another  shifty 
and  unstable  line.  No.  74  belonged  to  Arkansas. 
By  and  by  a  cut-off  threw  this  big  island  out  of 
Arkansas,  and  yet  not  within  Mississippi.  "Middle 
of  the  river"  on  one  side  of  it,  "channel"  on  the 
other.  That  is  as  I  understand  the  problem.  Wheth- 
er I  have  got  the  details  right  or  wrong,  this  fact 
remains:  that  here  is  this  big  and  exceedingly  valu- 
able island  of  four  thousand  acres,  thrust  out  in  the 
cold,  and  belonging  to  neither  the  one  state  nor  the 
other;  paying  taxes  to  neither,  owing  allegiance  to 
neither.  One  man  owns  the  whole  island,  and  of 
right  is  "the  man  without  a  country." 

Island  92  belongs  to  Arkansas.  The  river  moved 
it  over  and  joined  it  to  Mississippi.  A  chap  estab- 
lished a  whisky-shop  there,  without  a  Mississippi 
license,  and  enriched  himself  upon  Mississippi  cus- 


MARK     TWAIN 

torn  under  Arkansas  protection  (where  no  license  was 
in  those  days  required). 

We  glided  steadily  down  the  river  in  the  usual 
privacy — steamboat  or  other  moving  thing  seldom 
seen.  Scenery  as  always;  stretch  upon  stretch  of 
almost  unbroken  forest  on  both  sides  of  the  river; 
soundless  solitude.  Here  and  there  a  cabin  or  two, 
standing  in  small  openings  on  the  gray  and  grassless 
banks — cabins  which  had  formerly  stood  a  quarter 
or  half  mile  farther  to  the  front,  and  gradually  been 
pulled  farther  and  farther  back  as  the  shores  caved 
in.  As  at  Pilcher's  Point,  for  instance,  where  the 
cabins  had  been  moved  back  three  hundred  yards  in 
three  months,  so  we  were  told;  but  the  caving  banks 
had  already  caught  up  with  them,  and  they  were 
being  conveyed  rearward  once  more. 

Napoleon  had  but  small  opinion  of  Greenville,  Mis- 
sissippi, in  the  old  times;  but  behold,  Napoleon  is 
gone  to  the  catfishes,  and  here  is  Greenville  full  of 
life  and  activity,  and  making  a  considerable  flourish 
in  the  valley;  having  three  thousand  inhabitants,  it 
is  said,  and  doing  a  gross  trade  of  two  million  five 
hundred  thousand  dollars  annually.  A  growing 
town. 

There  was  much  talk  on  the  boat  about  the  Cal- 
houn  Land  Company,  an  enterprise  which  is  ex- 
pected to  work  wholesome  results.  Colonel  Cal- 
houn,  a  grandson  of  the  statesman,  went  to  Boston 
and  formed  a  syndicate  which  purchased  a  large 
tract  of  land  on  the  river,  in  Chicot  County,  Arkansas 
— some  ten  thousand  acres — for  cotton  -  growing. 
The  purpose  is  to  work  on  a  cash  basis:  buy  at  first 
288 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

hands,  and  handle  their  own  product;  supply  their 
negro  laborers  with  provisions  and  necessaries  at  a 
trifling  profit,  say  eight  or  ten  per  cent.;  furnish 
them  comfortable  quarters,  etc.,  and  encourage  them 
to  save  money  and  remain  on  the  place.  If  this 
proves  a  financial  success,  as  seems  quite  certain, 
they  propose  to  establish  a  banking-house  in  Green- 
ville, and  lend  money  at  an  unburdensome  rate  of 
interest — six  per  cent,  is  spoken  of. 

The  trouble  heretofore  has  been — I  am  quoting 
remarks  of  planters  and  steamboatmen — that  the 
planters,  although  owning  the  land,  were  without 
cash  capital ;  had  to  hypothecate  both  land  and  crop 
to  carry  on  the  business.  Consequently,  the  com- 
mission dealer  who  furnishes  the  money  takes  some 
risk  and  demands  big  interest — usually  ten  per  cent., 
and  two  and  one-half  per  cent,  for  negotiating  the 
loan.  The  planter  has  also  to  buy  his  supplies 
through  the  same  dealer,  paying  commissions  and 
profits.  Then  when  he  ships  his  crop,  the  dealer 
adds  his  commissions,  insurance,  etc.  So,  taking  it 
by  and  large,  and  first  and  last,  the  dealer's  share 
of  that  crop  is  about  twenty-five  per  cent.1 

A  cotton-planter's  estimate  of  the  average  margin 
of  profit  on  planting,  in  his  section:  One  man  and 
mule  will  raise  ten  acres  of  cotton,  giving  ten  bales 
cotton,  worth,  say  five  hundred  dollars;  cost  of 
producing,  say  three  hundred  and  fifty  dollars;  net 

1 "  But  what  can  the  state  do  where  the  people  are  under  subjection 
to  rates  of  interest  ranging  from  eighteen  to  thirty  per  cent.,  and 
are  also  under  the  necessity  of  purchasing  their  crops  in  advance 
even  of  planting,  at  these  rates,  for  the  privilege  of  purchasing  all 
their  supplies  at  one  hundred  per  cent,  profit?" — Edward  Atkinson. 
289 


MARK     TWAIN 

profit,  one  hundred  and  fifty  dollars;  or  fifteen  dollars 
per  acre.  There  is  also  a  profit  now  from  the  cotton- 
seed, which  formerly  had  little  value — none  where 
much  transportation  was  necessary.  In  sixteen  hun- 
dred pounds  crude  cotton,  four  hundred  are  lint, 
worth,  say,  ten  cents  a  pound;  and  twelve  hundred 
pounds  of  seed,  worth  twelve  dollars  or  thirteen 
dollars  per  ton.  Maybe  in  future  even  the  stems 
will  not  be  thrown  away.  Mr.  Edward  Atkinson 
says  that  for  each  bale  of  cotton  there  are  fifteen 
hundred  pounds  of  stems,  and  that  these  are  very 
rich  in  phosphate  of  lime  and  potash;  that  when 
ground  and  mixed  with  ensilage  or  cotton-seed  meal 
(which  is  too  rich  for  use  as  fodder  in  large  quan- 
tities), the  stem  mixture  makes  a  superior  food,  rich 
in  all  the  elements  needed  for  the  production  of 
milk,  meat,  and  bone.  Heretofore  the  stems  have 
been  considered  a  nuisance. 

Complaint  is  made  that  the  planter  remains 
grouty  toward  the  former  slave,  since  the  war;  will 
have  nothing  but  a  chill  business  relation  with  him, 
no  sentiment  permitted  to  intrude;  will  not  keep  a 
"store"  himself,  and  supply  the  negro's  wants  and 
thus  protect  the  negro's  pocket  and  make  him  able 
and  willing  to  stay  on  the  place  and  an  advantage 
to  him  to  do  it,  but  lets  that  privilege  to  some  thrifty 
Israelite,  who  encourages  the  thoughtless  negro  and 
wife  to  buy  all  sorts  of  things  which  they  could  do 
without — buy  on  credit,  at  big  prices,  month  after 
month,  credit  based  on  the  negro's  share  of  the 
growing  crop;  and  at  the  end  of  the  season,  the 
negro's  share  belongs  to  the  Israelite,  the  negro  is  in 
290 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

debt  besides,  is  discouraged,  dissatisfied,  restless,  and 
both  he  and  the  planter  are  injured;  for  he  will  take 
steamboat  and  migrate,  and  the  planter  must  get  a 
stranger  in  his  place  who  does  not  know  him,  does 
not  care  for  him,  will  fatten  the  Israelite  a  season, 
and  follow  his  predecessor  per  steamboat. 

It  is  hoped  that  the  Calhoun  Company  will  show, 
by  its  humane  and  protective  treatment  of  its  labor- 
ers, that  its  method  is  the  most  profitable  for  both 
planter  and  negro;  and  it  is  believed  that  a  general 
adoption  of  that  method  will  then  follow. 

And  where  so  many  are  saying  their  say,  shall  not 
the  barkeeper  testify?  He  is  thoughtful,  observant, 
never  drinks;  endeavors  to  earn  his  salary,  and  would 
earn  it  if  there  were  custom  enough.  He  says  the 
people  along  here  in  Mississippi  and  Louisiana  will 
send  up  the  river  to  buy  vegetables  rather  than  raise 
them,  and  they  will  come  aboard  at  the  landings  and 
buy  fruits  of  the  barkeeper.  Thinks  they  "don't 
know  anything  but  cotton";  believes  they  don't 
know  how  to  raise  vegetables  and  fruit — "at  least 
the  most  of  them."  Says  "a  nigger  will  go  to  H  for 
a  watermelon"  ("H"  is  all  I  find  in  the  stenog- 
rapher's report — means  Halifax  probably,  though 
that  seems  a  good  way  to  go  for  a  watermelon). 
Barkeeper  buys  watermelons  for  five  cents  up  the 
river,  brings  them  down  and  sells  them  for  fifty. 
"Why  does  he  mix  such  elaborate  and  picturesque 
drinks  for  the  nigger  hands  on  the  boat?"  Because 
they  won't  have  any  other.  "They  want  a  big 
drink:  don't  make  any  difference  what  you  make  it 
of,  they  want  the  worth  of  their  money.  You  give 
291 


MARK     TWAIN 

a  nigger  a  plain  gill  of  half-a-dollar  brandy  for  five 
cents — will  he  touch  it?  No.  Ain't  size  enough  to 
it.  But  you  put  up  a  pint  of  all  kinds  of  worthless 
rubbish,  and  heave  in  some  red  stuff  to  make  it 
beautiful — red's  the  main  thing — and  he  wouldn't 
put  down  that  glass  to  go  to  a  circus."  All  the  bars 
on  this  Anchor  Line  are  rented  and  owned  by  one 
firm.  They  furnish  the  liquors  from  their  own 
establishment,  and  hire  the  barkeepers  "on  salary." 
Good  liquors?  Yes,  on  some  of  the  boats,  where 
there  are  the  kind  of  passengers  that  want  it  and  can 
pay  for  it.  On  the  other  boats?  No.  Nobody  but 
the  deck-hands  and  firemen  to  drink  it.  "Brandy? 
Yes,  I've  got  brandy,  plenty  of  it;  but  you  don't 
want  any  of  it  unless  you've  made  your  will."  It 
isn't  as  it  used  to  be  in  the  old  times.  Then  every- 
body traveled  by  steamboat,  everybody  drank,  and 
everybody  treated  everybody  else.  "Now  most 
everybody  goes  by  railroad,  and  the  rest  don't 
drink."  In  the  old  times,  the  barkeeper  owned  the 
bar  himself,  "and  was  gay  and  smarty  and  talky  and 
all  jeweled  up,  and  was  the  toniest  aristocrat  on  the 
boat;  used  to  make  two  thousand  dollars  on  a  trip. 
A  father  who  left  his  son  a  steamboat  bar,  left  him 
a  fortune.  Now  he  leaves  him  board  and  lodging; 
yes,  and  washing  if  a  shirt  a  trip  will  do.  Yes, 
indeedy,  times  are  changed.  Why,  do  you  know, 
on  the  principal  line  of  boats  on  the  Upper  Missis- 
sippi they  don't  have  any  bar  at  all!  Sounds  like 
poetry,  but  it's  the  petrified  truth." 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

TOUGH   YARNS 

STACK  ISLAND.  I  remembered  Stack  Island; 
also  Lake  Providence,  Louisiana — which  is  the 
first  distinctly  Southern-looking  town  you  come  to, 
downward  bound ;  lies  level  and  low,  shade-trees  hung 
with  venerable  gray-beards  of  Spanish  moss;  "rest- 
ful, pensive,  Sunday  aspect  about  the  place,"  com- 
ments Uncle  Mumford,  with  feeling — also  with  truth. 
A  Mr.  H.  furnished  some  minor  details  of  fact 
concerning  this  region  which  I  would  have  hesitated 
to  believe,  if  I  had  not  known  him  to  be  a  steamboat 
mate.  He  was  a  passenger  of  ours,  a  resident  of 
Arkansas  City,  and  bound  to  Vicksburg  to  join  his 
boat,  a  little  Sunflower  packet.  He  was  an  austere 
man,  and  had  the  reputation  of  being  singularly  un- 
worldly, for  a  river-man.  Among  other  things,  he 
said  that  Arkansas  had  been  injured  and  kept  back 
by  generations  of  exaggerations  concerning  the 
mosquitoes  there.  One  may  smile,  said  he,  and  turn 
the  matter  off  as  being  a  small  thing;  but  when  you 
come  to  look  at  the  effects  produced,  in  the  way 
of  discouragement  of  immigration  and  diminished 
values  of  property,  it  was  quite  the  opposite  of  a 
small  thing,  or  thing  in  any  wise  to  be  coughed  down 
or  sneered  at.  These  mosquitoes  had  been  per- 
293 


MARK    TWAIN 

sistently  represented  as  being  formidable  and  lawless; 
whereas  "the  truth  is,  they  are  feeble,  insignificant 
in  size,  diffident  to  a  fault,  sensitive" — and  so  on, 
and  so  on;  you  would  have  supposed  he  was  talking 
about  his  family.  But  if  he  was  soft  on  the  Arkansas 
mosquitoes,  he  was  hard  enough  on  the  mosquitoes 
of  Lake  Providence  to  make  up  for  it — "those  Lake 
Providence  colossi,"  as  he  finely  called  them.  He 
said  that  two  of  them  could  whip  a  dog,  and  that 
four  of  them  could  hold  a  man  down;  and  except 
help  come,  they  would  kill  him — "butcher  him,"  as 
he  expressed  it.  Referred  in  a  sort  of  casual  way — 
and  yet  significant  way,  to  "the  fact  that  the  life 
policy  in  its  simplest  form  is  unknown  in  Lake  Provi- 
dence— they  take  out  a  mosquito  policy  besides." 
He  told  many  remarkable  things  about  those  law- 
less insects.  Among  others,  said  he  had  seen  them 
try  to  vote.  Noticing  that  this  statement  seemed  to 
<fbe  a  good  deal  of  a  strain  on  us,  he  modified  it  a 
little;  said  he  might  have  been  mistaken  as  to  that 
particular,  but  knew  he  had  seen  them  around  the 
polls  "canvassing." 

There  was  another  passenger — friend  of  H.'s — 
who  backed  up  the  harsh  evidence  against  those 
mosquitoes,  and  detailed  some  stirring  adventures 
which  he  had  had  with  them.  The  stories  were 
pretty  sizable,  merely  pretty  sizable;  yet  Mr.  H. 
was  continually  interrupting  with  a  cold,  inexorable 
"Wait — knock  off  twenty -five  per  cent,  of  that; 
now  go  on";  or,  "Wait — you  are  getting  that  too 
strong;  cut  it  down,  cut  it  down — you  get  a  leetle 
too  much  costumery  onto  your  statements:  always 
294 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

dress  a  fact  in  tights,  never  in  an  ulster";  or,  "Par- 
don, once  more;  if  you  are  going  to  load  anything 
more  onto  that  statement,  you  want  to  get  a  couple 
of  lighters  and  tow  the  rest,  because  it's  drawing  all 
the  water  there  is  in  the  river  already;  stick  to  facts 
— just  stick  to  the  cold  facts;  what  these  gentlemen 
want  for  a  book  is  the  frozen  truth — ain't  that  so, 
gentlemen?"  He  explained  privately  that  it  was 
necessary  to  watch  this  man  all  the  time,  and  keep 
him  within  bounds;  it  would  not  do  to  neglect  this 
precaution,  as  he,  Mr.  H.,  "knew  to  his  sorrow." 
Said  he,  "I  will  not  deceive  you;  he  told  me  such  a 
monstrous  lie  once  that  it  swelled  my  left  ear  up, 
and  spread  it  so  that  I  was  actually  not  able  to  see 
out  around  it ;  it  remained  so  for  months,  and  people 
came  miles  to  see  me  fan  myself  with  it." 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

VICKSBURG   DURING   THE   TROUBLE 

WE  used  to  plow  past  the  lofty  hill-city,  Vicks- 
burg,  down-stream;  but  we  cannot  do  that 
now.  A  cut-off  has  made  a  country  town  of  it,  like 
Osceola,  St.  Genevieve,  and  several  others.  There 
is  currentless  water — also  a  big  island — in  front  of 
Vicksburg  now.  You  come  down  the  river  the  other 
side  of  the  island,  then  turn  and  come  up  to  the 
town,  that  is,  in  high  water :  in  low  water  you  can't 
come  up,  but  must  land  some  distance  below  it. 

Signs  and  scars  still  remain,  as  reminders  of  Vicks- 
burg's  tremendous  war  experiences;  earthworks, 
trees  crippled  by  the  cannon-balls,  cave  refuges  in 
the  clay  precipices,  etc.  The  caves  did  good  service 
during  the  six  weeks'  bombardment  of  the  city — 
May  1 8  to  July  4,  1863.  They  were  used  by  the 
non-combatants — mainly  by  the  women  and  chil- 
dren; not  to  live  in  constantly,  but  to  fly  to  for 
safety  on  occasion.  They  were  mere  holes,  tunnels 
driven  into  the  perpendicular  clay-bank,  then 
branched  Y-shape,  within  the  hill.  Life  in  Vicks- 
burg during  the  six  weeks  was  perhaps — but  wait; 
here  are  some  materials  out  of  which  to  reproduce  it : 

Population,  twenty-seven  thousand  soldiers  and 
three  thousand  non-combatants;  the  city  utterly 
296 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

cut  off  from  the  world — walled  solidly  in,  the  front- 
age by  gunboats,  the  rear  by  soldiers  and  batteries; 
hence,  no  buying  and  selling  with  the  outside;  no 
passing  to  and  fro;  no  godspeeding  a  parting  guest, 
no  welcoming  a  coming  one;  no  printed  acres  of 
world- wide  news  to  be  read  at  breakfast,  mornings — 
a  tedious  dull  absence  of  such  matter,  instead ;  hence, 
also,  no  running  to  see  steamboats  smoking  into  view 
in  the  distance  up  or  down,  and  plowing  toward  the 
town — for  none  came,  the  river  lay  vacant  and  un- 
disturbed; no  rush  and  turmoil  around  the  railway- 
station,  no  struggling  over  bewildered  swarms  of 
passengers  by  noisy  mobs  of  hackmen — all  quiet 
there;  flour  two  hundred  dollars  a  barrel,  sugar 
thirty,  corn  ten  dollars  a  bushel,  bacon  five  dollars 
a  pound,  rum  a  hundred  dollars  a  gallon,  other  things 
in  proportion;  consequently,  no  roar  and  racket  of 
drays  and  carriages  tearing  along  the  streets;  noth- 
ing for  them  to  do,  among  that  handful  of  non- 
combatants  of  exhausted  means;  at  three  o'clock  in 
the  morning,  silence — silence  so  dead  that  the  meas- 
ured tramp  of  a  sentinel  can  be  heard  a  seemingly 
impossible  distance;  out  of  hearing  of  this  lonely 
sound,  perhaps  the  stillness  is  absolute:  all  in  a 
moment  come  ground-shaking  thunder-crashes  of 
artillery,  the  sky  is  cobwebbed  with  the  crisscrossing 
red  lines  streaming  from  soaring  bombshells,  and  a 
rain  of  iron  fragments  descends  upon  the  city,  de- 
scends upon  the  empty  streets — streets  which  are 
not  empty  a  moment  later,  but  mottled  with  dim 
figures  of  frantic  women  and  children  scurrying  from 
home  and  bed  toward  the  cave  dungeons — encour- 
297 


MARK     TWAIN 

aged  by  the  humorous  grim  soldiery,  who  shout ' '  Rats, 
to  your  holes!"  and  laugh. 

The  cannon-thunder  rages,  shells  scream  and 
crash  overhead,  the  iron  rain  pours  down,  one  hour, 
two  hours,  three,  possibly  six,  then  stops;  silence 
follows,  but  the  streets  are  still  empty;  the  silence 
continues;  by  and  by  a  head  projects  from  a  cave 
here  and  there  and  yonder,  and  reconnoitres  cau- 
tiously; the  silence  still  continuing,  bodies  follow 
heads,  and  jaded,  half-smothered  creatures  group 
themselves  about,  stretch  their  cramped  limbs,  draw 
in  deep  draughts  of  the  grateful  fresh  air,  gossip  with 
the  neighbors  from  the  next  cave ;  maybe  straggle  off 
home  presently,  or  take  a  lounge  through  the  town, 
if  the  stillness  continues;  and  will  scurry  to  the 
holes  again,  by  and  by,  when  the  war-tempest  breaks 
forth  once  more. 

There  being  but  three  thousand  of  these  cave- 
dwellers — merely  the  population  of  a  village — would 
they  not  come  to  know  each  other,  after  a  week 
or  two,  and  familiarly;  insomuch  that  the  fortunate 
or  unfortunate  experiences  of  one  would  be  of  interest 
to  all? 

Those  are  the  materials  furnished  by  history. 
From  them  might  not  almost  anybody  reproduce  for 
himself  the  life  of  that  time  in  Vicksburg?  Could 
you,  who  did  not  experience  it,  come  nearer  to  re- 
producing it  to  the  imagination  of  another  non- 
participant  than  could  a  Vicksburger  who  did  expe- 
rience it?  It  seems  impossible;  and  yet  there  are 
reasons  why  it  might  not  really  be.  When  one 
makes  his  first  voyage  in  a  ship,  it  is  an  experience 
298 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

which  multitudinously  bristles  with  striking  novel- 
ties; novelties  which  are  in  such  sharp  contrast  with 
all  this  person's  former  experiences  that  they  take 
a  seemingly  deathless  grip  upon  his  imagination  and 
memory.  By  tongue  or  pen  he  can  make  a  lands- 
man live  that  strange  and  stirring  voyage  over  with 
him;  make  him  see  it  all  and  feel  it  all.  But  if  he 
wait?  If  he  make  ten  voyages  in  succession — what 
then?  Why,  the  thing  has  lost  color,  snap,  surprise; 
and  has  become  commonplace.  The  man  would 
have  nothing  to  tell  that  would  quicken  a  landsman's 
pulse. 

Years  ago  I  talked  with  a  couple  of  the  Vicksburg 
non-combatants — a  man  and  his  wife.  Left  to  tell 
their  story  in  their  own  way,  those  people  told  it 
without  fire,  almost  without  interest. 

A  week  of  their  wonderful  life  there  would  have 
made  their  tongues  eloquent  forever  perhaps;  but 
they  had  six  weeks  of  it,  and  that  wore  the  novelty 
all  out;  they  got  used  to  being  bombshelled  out  of 
home  and  into  the  ground;  the  matter  became  com- 
monplace. After  that,  the  possibility  of  their  ever 
being  startlingly  interesting  in  their  talks  about  it 
was  gone.  What  the  man  said  was  to  this  effect: 

It  got  to  be  Sunday  all  the  time.  Seven  Sundays  in  the  week 
— to  us,  anyway.  We  hadn't  anything  to  do,  and  time  hung 
heavy.  Seven  Sundays,  and  all  of  them  broken  up  at  one  time 
or  another,  in  the  day  or  in  the  night,  by  a  few  hours  of  the 
awful  storm  of  fire  and  thunder  and  iron.  At  first  we  used  to 
shin  for  the  holes  a  good  deal  faster  than  we  did  afterward. 
The  first  time  I  forgot  the  children,  and  Maria  fetched  them  both 
along.  When  she  was  all  safe  in  the  cave  she  fainted.  Two  or 
three  weeks  afterward,  when  she  was  running  for  the  holes,  one 
299 


MARK     TWAIN 

morning,  through  a  shell-shower,  a  big  shell  burst  near  her  and 
covered  her  all  over  with  dirt,  and  a  piece  of  iron  carried  away 
her  game-bag  of  false  hair  from  the  back  of  her  head.  Well,  she 
stopped  to  get  that  game-bag  before  she  shoved  along  again! 
Was  getting  used  to  things  already,  you  see.  We  all  got  so  that 
we  could  tell  a  good  deal  about  shells;  and  after  that  we  didn't 
always  go  under  shelter  if  it  was  a  light  shower.  Us  men  would 
loaf  around  and  talk;  and  a  man  would  say,  "There  she  goes!" 
and  name  the  kind  of  shell  it  was  from  the  sound  of  it,  and  go 
on  talking — if  there  wasn't  any  danger  from  it.  If  a  shell  was 
bursting  close  over  us,  we  stopped  talking  and  stood  still;  un- 
comfortable, yes,  but  it  wasn't  safe  to  move.  When  it  let  go, 
we  went  on  talking  again,  if  nobody  was  hurt — maybe  saying, 
"That  was  a  ripper!"  or  some  such  commonplace  comment  before 
we  resumed;  or,  maybe,  we  would  see  a  shell  poising  itself  away 
high  in  the  air  overhead.  In  that  case,  every  fellow  just  whipped 
out  a  sudden  "See  you  again,  gents!"  and  shoved.  Often  and 
often  I  saw  gangs  of  ladies  promenading  the  streets,  looking  as 
cheerful  as  you  please,  and  keeping  an  eye  canted  up  watching 
the  shells;  and  I've  seen  them  stop  still  when  they  were  uncertain 
about  what  a  shell  was  going  to  do,  and  wait  and  make  certain; 
and  after  that  they  sa'ntered  along  again,  or  lit  out  for  shelter, 
according  to  the  verdict.  Streets  in  some  towns  have  a  litter  of 
pieces  of  paper,  and  odds  and  ends  of  one  sort  or  another  lying 
around.  Ours  hadn't;  they  had  iron  litter.  Sometimes  a  man 
would  gather  up  all  the  iron  fragments  and  unbursted  shells  in 
his  neighborhood,  and  pile  them  into  a  kind  of  monument  in  his 
front  yard — a  ton  of  it,  sometimes.  No  glass  left;  glass  couldn't 
stand  such  a  bombardment;  it  was  all  shivered  out.  Windows 
of  the  houses  vacant — looked  like  eyeholes  in  a  skull.  Whole 
panes  were  as  scarce  as  news. 

We  had  church  Sundays.  Not  many  there,  along  at  first; 
but  by  and  by  pretty  good  turnouts.  I've  seen  service  stop  a 
minute,  and  everybody  sit  quiet — no  voice  heard,  pretty  funeral- 
like  then — and  all  the  more  so  on  account  of  the  awful  boom  and 
crash  going  on  outside  and  overhead;  and  pretty  soon,  when  a 
body  could  be  heard,  service  would  go  on  again.  Organs  and 
church  music  mixed  up  with  a  bombardment  is  a  powerful  queer 
combination — along  at  first.  Coming  out  of  church,  one  morn- 
ing, we  had  an  accident — the  only  one  that  happened  around  me 
on  a  Sunday.  I  was  just  having  a  hearty  hand-shake  with  a 
300 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

friend  I  hadn't  seen  for  a  while,  and  saying,  "  Drop  into  our  cave 
to-night,  after  bombardment;  we've  got  hold  of  a  pint  of  prime 
wh — "  Whisky,  I  was  going  to  say,  you  know,  but  a  shell 
interrupted.  A  chunk  of  it  cut  the  man's  arm  off,  and  left  it 
dangling  in  my  hand.  And  do  you  know  the  thing  that  is 
going  to  stick  the  longest  in  my  memory,  and  outlast  everything 
else,  little  and  big,  I  reckon,  is  the  mean  thought  I  had  then? 
It  was,  "the  whisky  is  saved."  And  yet,  don't  you  know,  it  was 
kind  of  excusable;  because  it  was  as  scarce  as  diamonds,  and  we 
had  only  just  that  little;  never  had  another  taste  during  the  siege. 

Sometimes  the  caves  were  desperately  crowded,  and  always 
hot  and  close.  Sometimes  a  cave  had  twenty  or 'twenty -five 
people  packed  into  it;  no  turning-room  for  anybody;  air  so  foul, 
sometimes,  you  couldn't  have  made  a  candle  burn  in  it.  A  child 
was  born  in  one  of  those  caves  one  night.  Think  of  that;  why, 
it  was  like  having  it  born  in  a  trunk. 

Twice  we  had  sixteen  people  in  our  cave;  and  a  number  of 
times  we  had  a  dozen.  Pretty  suffocating  in  there.  We  always 
had  eight;  eight  belonged  there.  Hunger  and  misery  and  sick- 
ness and  fright  and  sorrow,  and  I  don't  know  what  all,  got  so 
loaded  into  them  that  none  of  them  were  ever  rightly  their 
old  selves  after  the  siege.  They  all  died  but  three  of  us  within 
a  couple  of  years.  One  night  a  shell  burst  in  front  of  the  hole 
and  caved  it  in  and  stopped  it  up.  It  was  lively  times,  for  a 
while,  digging  out.  Some  of  us  came  near  smothering.  After 
that  we  made  two  openings — ought  to  have  thought  of  it  at  first. 

Mule  meat?  No,  we  only  got  down  to  that  the  last  day  or  two. 
Of  course  it  was  good;  anything  is  good  when  you  are  starving. 

This  man  had  kept  a  diary  during — six  weeks? 
No,  only  the  first  six  days.  The  first  day,  eight 
close  pages;  the  second,  five;  the  third,  one — loosely 
written;  the  fourth,  three  or  four  lines;  a  line  or 
two  the  fifth  and  sixth  days;  seventh  day,  diary 
abandoned;  life  in  terrific  Vicksburg  having  now 
become  commonplace  and  matter  of  course. 

The  war  history  of  Vicksburg  has  more  about  it 
to  interest  the  general  reader  than  that  of  any  other 
301 


MARK     TWAIN 

of  the  river  towns.  It  is  full  of  variety,  full  of  inci- 
dent, full  of  the  picturesque.  Vicksburg  held  out 
longer  than  any  other  important  river  town,  and 
saw  warfare  in  all  its  phases,  both  land  and  water — 
the  siege,  the  mine,  the  assault,  the  repulse,  the 
bombardment,  sickness,  captivity,  famine. 

The  most  beautiful  of  all  the  national  cemeteries 
is  here.  Over  the  great  gateway  is  this  inscription: 

"HERE  REST  IN  PEACE  16,600  WHO  DIED  FOR  THEIR 

COUNTRY   IN   THE   YEARS    l86l    TO    1865" 

The  grounds  are  nobly  situated;  being  very  high 
and  commanding  a  wide  prospect  of  land  and  river. 
They  are  tastefully  laid  out  in  broad  terraces,  with 
winding  roads  and  paths ;  and  there  is  profuse  adorn- 
ment in  the  way  of  semitropical  shrubs  and  flowers ; 
and  in  one  part  is  a  piece  of  native  wild-wood,  left 
just  as  it  grew,  and,  therefore,  perfect  in  its  charm. 
Everything  about  this  cemetery  suggests  the  hand 
of  the  national  government.  The  government's 
work  is  always  conspicuous  for  excellence,  solidity, 
thoroughness,  neatness.  The  government  does  its 
work  well  in  the  first  place,  and  then  takes  care  of  it. 

By  winding  roads — which  were  often  cut  to  so 
great  a  depth  between  perpendicular  walls  that  they 
were  mere  roofless  tunnels — we  drove  out  a  mile  or 
two  and  visited  the  monument  which  stands  upon 
the  scene  of  the  surrender  of  Vicksburg  to  General 
Grant  by  General  Pemberton.  Its  metal  will  pre- 
serve it  from  the  hackings  and  chippings  which  so 
defaced  its  predecessor,  which  was  of  marble;  but 
302 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

the  brick  foundations  are  crumbling,  and  it  will 
tumble  down  by  and  by.  It  overlooks  a  picturesque 
region  of  wooded  hills  and  ravines;  and  is  not  un- 
picturesque  itself,  being  well  smothered  in  flowering 
weeds.  The  battered  remnant  of  the  marble  monu- 
ment has  been  removed  to  the  National  Cemetery. 

On  the  road,  a  quarter  of  a  mile  townward,  an 
aged  colored  man  showed  us,  with  pride,  an  un- 
exploded  bombshell  which  had  lain  in  his  yard  since 
the  day  it  fell  there  during  the  siege. 

"I  was  a-stannin'  heah,  an'  de  dog  was  a-stannin' 
heah;  de  dog  he  went  for  de  shell,  gwine  to  pick  a 
fuss  wid  it;  but  I  didn't;  I  says,  'Jes'  make  youseff 
at  home  heah;  lay  still  whah  you  is,  or  bust  up  de 
place,  jes'  as  you's  a  mind  to,  but  JT's  got  business 
out  in  de  woods,  I  has!'" 

Vicksburg  is  a  town  of  substantial  business  streets 
and  pleasant  residences;  it  commands  the  commerce 
of  the  Yazoo  and  Sunflower  rivers;  is  pushing  rail- 
ways in  several  directions,  through  rich  agricultural 
regions,  and  has  a  promising  future  of  prosperity  and 
importance. 

Apparently,  nearly  all  the  river  towns,  big  and 
little,  have  made  up  their  minds  that  they  must 
look  mainly  to  railroads  for  wealth  and  upbuilding, 
henceforth.  They  are  acting  upon  this  idea.  The 
signs  are  that  the  next  twenty  years  will  bring 
about  some  noteworthy  changes  in  the  valley,  in 
the  direction  of  increased  population  and  wealth, 
and  in  the  intellectual  advancement  and  the  liberal- 
izing of  opinion  which  go  naturally  with  these.  And 
yet,  if  one  may  judge  by  the  past,  the  river  towns 
303 


MARK     TWAIN 

will  manage  to  find  and  use  a  chance,  here  and 
there,  to  cripple  and  retard  their  progress.  They 
kept  themselves  back  in  the  days  of  steamboating 
supremacy,  by  a  system  of  wharfage  dues  so  stupidly 
graded  as  to  prohibit  what  may  be  called  small 
retail  traffic  in  freights  and  passengers.  Boats  were 
charged  such  heavy  wharfage  that  they  could  not 
afford  to  land  for  one  or  two  passengers  or  a  light 
lot  of  freight.  Instead  of  encouraging  the  bringing 
of  trade  to  their  doors,  the  towns  diligently  and  effect- 
ively discouraged  it .  They  could  have  had  many  boats 
and  low  rates;  but  their  policy  rendered  few  boats 
and  high  rates  compulsory.  It  was  a  policy  which  ex- 
tended— and  extends — from  New  Orleans  to  St.  Paul. 

We  had  a  strong  desire  to  make  a  trip  up  the 
Yazoo  and  the  Sunflower — an  interesting  region  at 
any  time,  but  additionally  interesting  at  this  time, 
because  up  there  the  great  inundation  was  still  to 
be  seen  in  force — but  we  were  nearly  sure  to  have 
to  wait  a  day  or  more  for  a  New  Orleans  boat  on 
return;  so  we  were  obliged  to  give  up  the  project. 

Here  is  a  story  which  I  picked  up  on  board  the 
/  boat  that  night.  I  insert  it  in  this  place  merely 
because  it  is  a  good  story,  not  because  it  belongs 
here — for  it  doesn't.  It  was  told  by  a  passenger — a 
college  professor — and  was  called  to  the  surface  in 
the  course  of  a  general  conversation  which  began 
with  talk  about  horses,  drifted  into  talk  about 
astronomy,  then  into  talk  about  the  lynching  of  the 
gamblers  in  Vicksburg  half  a  century  ago,  then  into 
talk  about  dreams  and  superstitions ;  and  ended,  after 
midnight,  in  a  dispute  over  free  trade  and  protection. 
304 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 

THE  PROFESSOR'S  YARN 

IT  was  in  the  early  days.  I  was  not  a  college 
professor  then.  I  was  a  humble-minded  young 
land-surveyor,  with  the  world  before  me — to  survey, 
in  case  anybody  wanted  it  done.  I  had  a  contract 
to  survey  a  route  for  a  great  mining  ditch  in  Cali- 
fornia, and  I  was  on  my  way  thither,  by  sea — a  three 
or  four  weeks'  voyage.  There  were  a  good  many 
passengers,  but  I  had  very  little  to  say  to  them; 
reading  and  dreaming  were  my  passions,  and  I 
avoided  conversation  in  order  to  indulge  these  appe- 
tites. There  were  three  professional  gamblers  on 
board — rough,  repulsive  fellows.  I  never  had  any 
talk  with  them,  yet  I  could  not  help  seeing  them 
with  some  frequency,  for  they  gambled  in  an  upper- 
deck  stateroom  every  day  and  night,  and  in  my 
promenades  I  often  had  glimpses  of  them  through 
their  door,  which  stood  a  little  ajar  to  let  out  the 
surplus  tobacco-smoke  and  profanity.  They  were 
an  evil  and  hateful  presence,  but  I  had  to  put  up 
with  it,  of  course. 

There  was  one  other  passenger  who  fell  under 

my  eye  a  good  deal,  for  he  seemed  determined  to  be 

friendly  with  me,  and  I  could  not  have  gotten  rid 

of  him  without  running  some  chance  of  hurting  his 

305 


MARK     TWAIN 

feelings,  and  I  was  far  from  wishing  to  do  that. 
Besides,  there  was  something  engaging  in  his  coun- 
trified simplicity  and  his  beaming  good  nature.  The 
first  time  I  saw  this  Mr.  John  Backus,  I  guessed, 
from  his  clothes  and  his  looks,  that  he  was  a  grazier 
or  farmer  from  the  backwoods  of  some  Western 
state  —  doubtless  Ohio  —  and  afterward,  when  he 
dropped  into  his  personal  history,  and  I  discovered 
that  he  was  a  cattle-raiser  from  interior  Ohio,  I  was 
so  pleased  with  my  own  penetration  that  I  wanned 
toward  him  for  verifying  my  instinct. 

He  got  to  dropping  alongside  me  every  day,  after 
breakfast,  to  help  me  make  my  promenade;  and  so, 
in  the  course  of  time,  his  easy-working  jaw  had  told 
me  everything  about  his  business,  his  prospects,  his 
family,  his  relatives,  his  politics — in  fact,  everything 
that  concerned  a  Backus,  living  or  dead.  And  mean- 
time I  think  he  had  managed  to  get  out  of  me 
everything  I  knew  about  my  trade,  my  tribe,  my 
purposes,  my  prospects,  and  myself.  He  was  a 
gentle  and  persuasive  genius,  and  this  thing  showed 
it ;  for  I  was  not  given  to  talking  about  my  matters. 
I  said  something  about  triangulation,  once;  the 
stately  word  pleased  his  ear;  he  inquired  what  it 
meant;  I  explained.  After  that  he  quietly  and  in- 
offensively ignored  my  name,  and  always  called  me 
Triangle. 

What  an  enthusiast  he  was  in  cattle!  At  the  bare 
name  of  a  bull  or  a  cow,  his  eye  would  light  and 
his  eloquent  tongue  would  turn  itself  loose.  As  long 
as  I  would  walk  and  listen,  he  would  walk  and  talk; 
he  knew  all  breeds,  he  loved  all  breeds,  he  caressed 
306 


LIFE    ON    THE    MISSISSIPPI 

them  all  with  his  affectionate  tongue.  I  tramped 
along  in  voiceless  misery  while  the  cattle  question 
was  up.  When  I  could  endure  it  no  longer,  I  used 
to  deftly  insert  a  scientific  topic  into  the  conversa- 
tion; then  my  eye  fired  and  his  faded;  my  tongue 
fluttered,  his  stopped;  life  was  a  joy  to  me,  and  a 
sadness  to  him. 

One  day  he  said,  a  little  hesitatingly,  and  with 
somewhat  of  diffidence: 

"Triangle,  would  you  mind  coming  down  to  my 
stateroom  a  minute  and  have  a  little  talk  on  a 
certain  matter?" 

I  went  with  him  at  once.  Arrived  there,  he  put 
his  head  out,  glanced  up  and  down  the  saloon  warily, 
then  closed  the  door  and  locked  it.  We  sat  down 
on  the  sofa  and  he  said : 

"I'm  a-going  to  make  a  little  proposition  to  you, 
and  if  it  strikes  you  favorable,  it  '11  be  a  middling 
good  thing  for  both  of  us.  You  ain't  a-going  out 
to  Californy  for  fun,  nuther  am  I — it's  business,  ain't 
that  so?  Well,  you  can  do  me  a  good  turn,  and  so 
can  I  you,  if  we  see  fit.  I've  raked  and  scraped  and 
saved  a  considerable  many  years,  and  I've  got  it  all 
here."  He  unlocked  an  old  hair  trunk,  tumbled  a 
chaos  of  shabby  clothes  aside,  and  drew  a  short, 
stout  bag  into  view  for  a  moment,  then  buried  it 
again  and  relocked  the  trunk.  Dropping  his  voice 
to  a  cautious,  low  tone,  he  continued:  "She's  all 
there — a  round  ten  thousand  dollars  in  yellow-boys; 
now,  this  is  my  little  idea:  What  I  don't  know  about 
raising  cattle  ain't  worth  knowing.  There's  mints 
of  money  in  it  in  Californy.  Well,  I  know,  and  you 
307 


MARK     TWAIN 

know,  that  all  along  a  line  that's  being  surveyed, 
there's  little  dabs  of  land  that  they  call  'gores,'  that 
fall  to  the  surveyor  free  gratis  for  nothing.  All 
you've  got  to  do  on  your  side  is  to  survey  in  such  a 
way  that  the  'gores'  will  fall  on  good  fat  land,  then 
you  turn  'em  over  to  me,  I  stock  'em  with  cattle, 
in  rolls  the  cash,  I  plank  out  your  share  of  the 
dollars  regular  right  along,  and — " 

I  was  sorry  to  wither  his  blooming  enthusiasm, 
but  it  could  not  be  helped.  I  interrupted  and  said 
severely : 

"I  am  not  that  kind  of  a  surveyor.  Let  us  change 
the  subject,  Mr.  Backus." 

It  was  pitiful  to  see  his  confusion  and  hear  his 
awkward  and  shamefaced  apologies.  I  was  as  much 
distressed  as  he  was — especially  as  he  seemed  so  far 
from  having  suspected  that  there  was  anything  im- 
proper in  his  proposition.  So  I  hastened  to  console 
him  and  lead  him  on  to  forget  his  mishap  in  a  con- 
versational orgy  about  cattle  and  butchery.  We 
were  lying  at  Acapulco,  and  as  we  went  on  deck  it 
happened  luckily  that  the  crew  were  just  beginning 
to  hoist  some  beeves  aboard  in  slings.  Backus's 
melancholy  vanished  instantly,  and  with  it  the 
memory  of  his  late  mistake. 

"Now,  only  look  at  that!"  cried  he.  "My  good- 
ness, Triangle,  what  would  they  say  to  it  in  Ohio? 
Wouldn't  their  eyes  bug  out  to  see  'em  handled  like 
that? — wouldn't  they,  though?" 

All  the  passengers  were  on  deck  to  look — even  the 
gamblers — and  Backus  knew  them  all,  and  had 
afflicted  them  all  with  his  pet  topic.  As  I  moved 
308 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

away  I  saw  one  of  the  gamblers  approach  and  accost 
him;  then  another  of  them;  then  the  third.  I 
halted,  waited,  watched ;  the  conversation  continued 
between  the  four  men ;  it  grew  earnest ;  Backus  drew 
gradually  away;  the  gamblers  followed  and  kept  at 
his  elbow.  I  was  uncomfortable.  However,  as  they 
passed  me  presently,  I  heard  Backus  say  with  a  tone 
of  persecuted  annoyance : 

"But  it  ain't  any  use,  gentlemen;  I  tell  you  again, 
as  I've  told  you  a  half  a  dozen  times  before,  I  warn't 
raised  to  it,  and  I  ain't  a-going  to  resk  it." 

I  felt  relieved.  "His  level  head  will  be  his  suffi- 
cient protection,"  I  said  to  myself. 

During  the  fortnight's  run  from  Acapulco  to  San 
Francisco  I  several  times  saw  the  gamblers  talking 
earnestly  with  Backus,  and  once  I  threw  out  a 
gentle  warning  to  him.  He  chuckled  comfortably 
and  said: 

"Oh,  yes!  they  tag  around  after  me  considerable 
— want  me  to  play  a  little,  just  for  amusement,  they 
say — but  laws-a-me,  if  my  folks  have  told  me  once 
to  look  out  for  that  sort  of  live  stock,  they've  told 
me  a  thousand  times,  I  reckon." 

By  and  by,  in  due  course,  we  were  approaching 
San  Francisco.  It  was  an  ugly,  black  night,  with 
a  strong  wind  blowing,  but  there  was  not  much  sea. 
I  was  on  deck  alone.  Toward  ten  I  started  below. 
A  figure  issued  from  the  gamblers'  den  and  dis- 
appeared in  the  darkness.  I  experienced  a  shock, 
for  I  was  sure  it  was  Backus.  I  flew  down  the  com- 
panionway,  looked  about  for  him,  could  not  find 
him,  then  returned  to  the  deck  just  in  time  to  catch 
309 


MARK     TWAIN 

a  glimpse  of  him  as  he  re-entered  that  confounded 
nest  of  rascality.  Had  he  yielded  at  last?  I  feared 
it.  What  had  he  gone  below  for?  His  bag  of  coin? 
Possibly.  I  drew  near  the  door,  full  of  bodings. 
It  was  a-crack,  and  I  glanced  in  and  saw  a  sight  that 
made  me  bitterly  wish  I  had  given  my  attention  to 
saving  my  poor  cattle-friend,  instead  of  reading  and 
dreaming  my  foolish  time  away.  He  was  gambling. 
Worse  still,  he  was  being  plied  with  champagne,  and 
was  already  showing  some  effect  from  it.  He  praised 
the  "cider,"  as  he  called  it,  and  said  now  that  he 
had  got  a  taste  of  it  he  almost  believed  he  would 
drink  it  if  it  was  spirits,  it  was  so  good  and  so  ahead 
of  anything  he  had  ever  run  across  before.  Sur- 
reptitious smiles  at  this  passed  from  one  rascal  to 
another,  and  they  filled  all  the  glasses,  and  while 
Backus  honestly  drained  his  to  the  bottom  they 
pretended  to  do  the  same,  but  threw  the  wine  over 
their  shoulders. 

I  could  not  bear  the  scene,  so  I  wandered  forward 
and  tried  to  interest  myself  in  the  sea  and  the  voices 
of  the  wind.  But  no,  my  uneasy  spirit  kept  dragging 
me  back  at  quarter-hour  intervals,  and  always  I  saw 
Backus  drinking  his  wine — fairly  and  squarely,  and 
the  others  throwing  theirs  away.  It  was  the  pain- 
fulest  night  I  ever  spent. 

The  only  hope  I  had  was  that  we  might  reach  our 
anchorage  with  speed — that  would  break  up  the 
game.  I  helped  the  ship  along  all  I  could  with  my 
prayers.  At  last  we  went  booming  through  the 
Golden  Gate,  and  my  pulses  leaped  for  joy.  I 
hurried  back  to  that  door  and  glanced  in.  Alas! 
310 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

there  was  small  room  for  hope — Backus's  eyes  were 
heavy  and  bloodshot,  his  sweaty  face  was  crimson, 
his  speech  maudlin  and  thick,  his  body  sawed  drunk- 
enly  about  with  the  weaving  motion  of  the  ship. 
He  drained  another  glass  to  the  dregs,  while  the 
cards  were  being  dealt. 

He  took  his  hand,  glanced  at  it,  and  his  dull  eyes 
lit  up  for  a  moment.  The  gamblers  observed  it,  and 
showed  their  gratification  by  hardly  perceptible 
signs. 

"How  many  cards?" 

"None!"  said  Backus. 

One  villain — named  Hank  Wiley — discarded  one 
card,  the  others  three  each.  The  betting  began. 
Heretofore  the  bets  had  been  trifling — a  dollar  or 
two ;  but  Backus  started  off  with  an  eagle  now,  Wiley 
hesitated  a  moment,  then  "saw  it,"  and  "went  ten 
dollars  better."  The  other  two  threw  up  their 
hands. 

Backus  went  twenty  better.    Wiley  said: 

"I  see  that,  and  go  you  a  hundred  better!"  then 
smiled  and  reached  for  the  money. 

"Let  it  alone,"  said  Backus,  with  drunken  gravity. 

"What!  you  mean  to  say  you're  going  to  cover  it?" 

"Cover  it?  Well,  I  reckon  I  am — and  lay  an- 
other hundred  on  top  of  it,  too." 

He  reached  down  inside  his  overcoat  and  produced 
the  required  sum. 

"Oh,  that's  your  little  game,  is  it?  I  see  your 
raise,  and  raise  it  five  hundred!"  said  Wiley. 

"Five  hundred  better!"  said  the  foolish  bull-driver, 
and  pulled  out  the  amount  and  showered  it  on  the 
3" 


MARK     TWAIN 

pile.  The  three  conspirators  hardly  tried  to  conceal 
their  exultation. 

All  diplomacy  and  pretense  were  dropped  now, 
and  the  sharp  exclamations  came  thick  and  fast, 
and  the  yellow  pyramid  grew  higher  and  higher. 
At  last  ten  thousand  dollars  lay  in  view.  Wiley  cast 
a  bag  of  coin  on  the  table,  and  said  with  mocking 
gentleness : 

"Five  thousand  dollars  better,  my  friend  from  the 
rural  districts — what  do  you  say  now?1' 

"I  call  you!"  said  Backus,  heaving  his  golden  shot- 
bag  on  the  pile.  "What  have  you  got?" 

"Four  kings,  you  d d  fool!"  and  Wiley  threw 

down  his  cards  and  surrounded  the  stakes  with  his 
arms. 

"Four  aces,  you  ass!"  thundered  Backus,  covering 
his  man  with  a  cocked  revolver.  "I'm  a  professional 
gambler  myself,  and  I've  been  laying  for  you  duffers 
all  this  voyage!" 

Down  went  the  anchor,  rumbledy-dum-dum!  and 
the  trip  was  ended. 

Well,  well — it  is  a  sad  world.  One  of  the  three 
gamblers  was  Backus's  "pal."  It  was  he  that  dealt 
the  fateful  hands.  According  to  an  understanding 
with  the  two  victims,  he  was  to  have  given  Backus 
four  queens,  but  alas !  he  didn't. 

A  week  later  I  stumbled  upon  Backus — arrayed 
in  the  height  of  fashion — in  Montgomery  street. 
He  said  cheerily,  as  we  were  parting: 

"Ah,  by  the  way,  you  needn't  mind  about  those 
gores.  I  don't  really  know  anything  about  cattle, 
except  what  I  was  able  to  pick  up  in  a  week's  ap- 
312 


LIFE    ON    THE    MISSISSIPPI 

prenticeship  over  in  Jersey,  just  before  we  sailed. 
My  cattle  culture  and  cattle  enthusiasm  have  served 
their  turn — I  sha'n't  need  them  any  more." 

Next  day  we  reluctantly  parted  from  the  Gold 
Dust  and  her  officers,  hoping  to  see  that  boat  and  all 
those  officers  again,  some  day.  A  thing  which  the 
fates  were  to  render  tragically  impossible! 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 

THE  END  OF  THE  "GOLD  DUST" 

FOR,  three  months  later,  August  8,  while  I  was 
writing   one  of  these  foregoing  chapters,  the 
New  York  papers  brought  this  telegram : 

"A  TERRIBLE  DISASTER. 

"SEVENTEEN  PERSONS  KILLED  BY  AN  EXPLOSION  ON  THE 
STEAMER  '  GOLD  DUST.' 

"NASHYILLE,  August  7. — A  despatch  from  Hick- 
man,  Kentucky,  says: 

"The  steamer  Gold  Dust  exploded  her  boilers  at  three  o'clock 
to-day,  just  after  leaving  Hickman.  Forty-seven  persons  were 
scalded  and  seventeen  are  missing.  The  boat  was  landed  in 
the  eddy  just  above  the  town,  and  through  the  exertions  of  the 
citizens  the  cabin  passengers,  officers,  and  part  of  the  crew  and 
deck  passengers  were  taken  ashore  and  removed  to  the  hotels 
and  residences.  Twenty-four  of  the  injured  were  lying  in  Hoi- 
comb's  dry-goods  store  at  one  time,  where  they  received  every 
attention  before  being  removed  to  more  comfortable  places." 

A  list  of  the  names  followed,  whereby  it  appeared 
that  of  the  seventeen  dead,  one  was  the  barkeeper; 
and  among  the  forty-seven  wounded  were  the  cap- 
tain, chief  mate,  second  mate,  and  second  and  third 
clerks;  also  Mr.  Lem.  Gray,  pilot,  and  several  mem- 
bers of  the  crew. 

3H 


LIFE     ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

In  answer  to  a  private  telegram  we  learned  that 
none  of  these  was  severely  hurt,  except  Mr.  Gray. 
Letters  received  afterward  confirmed  this  news,  and 
said  that  Mr.  Gray  was  improving  and  would  get 
well.  Later  letters  spoke  less  hopefully  of  his  case; 
and  finally  came  one  announcing  his  death.  A  good 
man,  a  most  companionable  and  manly  man,  and 
worthy  of  a  kindlier  fate. 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII 

THE   HOUSE    BEAUTIFUL 

WE  took  passage  in  a  Cincinnati  boat  for  New 
Orleans;  or  on  a  Cincinnati  boat — either  is 
correct;  the  former  is  the  Eastern  form  of  put- 
ting it,  the  latter  the  Western. 

Mr.  Dickens  declined  to  agree  that  the  Missis- 
sippi steamboats  were  "magnificent,"  or  that  they 
were  "floating  palaces" — terms  which  had  always 
been  applied  to  them;  terms  which  did  not  over- 
express  the  admiration  with  which  the  people  viewed 
them. 

Mr.  Dickens's  position  was  unassailable,  possibly; 
the  people's  position  was  certainly  unassailable.  If 
Mr.  Dickens  was  comparing  these  boats  with  the 
crown  jewels;  or  with  the  Taj,  or  with  the  Matter- 
horn;  or  with  some  other  priceless  or  wonderful 
thing  which  he  had  seen,  they  were  not  magnificent 
— he  was  right.  The  people  compared  them  with 
what  they  had  seen;  and,  thus  measured,  thus  judged, 
the  boats  were  magnificent — the  term  was  the  correct 
one,  it  was  not  at  all  too  strong.  The  people  were 
as  right  as  was  Mr.  Dickens.  The  steamboats  were 
finer  than  anything  on  shore.  Compared  with  supe- 
rior dwelling-houses  and  first-class  hotels  in  the 
valley,  they  were  indubitably  magnificent,  they 
316 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

were  "palaces."  To  a  few  people  living  in  New 
Orleans  and  St.  Louis  they  were  not  magnificent, 
perhaps;  not  palaces;  but  to  the  great  majority  of 
those  populations,  and  to  the  entire  populations 
spread  over  both  banks  between  Baton  Rouge  and 
St.  Louis,  they  were  palaces;  they  tallied  with  the 
citizen's  dream  of  what  magnificence  was,  and  sat- 
isfied it. 

Every  town  and  village  along  that  vast  stretch 
of  double  river-frontage  had  a  best  dwelling,  finest 
dwelling,  mansion — the  home  of  its  wealthiest  and 
most  conspicuous  citizen.  It  is  easy  to  describe  it: 
large  grassy  yard,  with  paling  fence  painted  white — 
in  fair  repair;  brick  walk  from  gate  to  door;  big, 
square,  two-story  "frame"  house,  painted  white  and 
porticoed  like  a  Grecian  temple — with  this  difference, 
that  the  imposing  fluted  columns  and  Corinthian 
capitals  were  a  pathetic  sham,  being  made  of  white 
pine,  and  painted;  iron  knocker;  brass  door-knob — 
discolored,  for  lack  of  polishing.  Within,  an  un- 
carpeted  hall,  of  planed  boards;  opening  out  of  it, 
a  parlor,  fifteen  feet  by  fifteen — in  some  instances 
five  or  ten  feet  larger;  ingrain  carpet;  mahogany 
center-table;  lamp  on  it,  with  green-paper  shade — 
standing  on  a  gridiron,  so  to  speak,  made  of  high- 
colored  yarns,  by  the  young  ladies  of  the  house, 
and  called  a  lamp-mat;  several  books,  piled  and 
disposed,  with  cast-iron  exactness,  according  to  an 
inherited  and  unchangeable  plan ;  among  them,  Tup- 
per,  much  penciled ;  also,  Friendship's  Offering,  and 
Affection's  Wreath,  with  their  sappy  inanities  illus- 
trated in  die-away  mezzotints;  also,  Ossian;  Alonzo 


MARK     TWAIN 

and  Melissa,  maybe  Ivanhoe;  also  "Album,"  full  of 
original  "poetry"  of  the  Thou-hast-wounded-the- 
spirit-that-loved-thee  breed;  two  or  three  goody- 
goody  works  —  Shepherd  of  Salisbury  Plain,  etc.; 
current  number  of  the  chaste  and  innocuous  Godey's 
Lady's  Book,  with  painted  fashion-plate  of  wax- 
figure  women  with  mouths  all  alike — lips  and  eye- 
lids the  same  size — each  five-foot  woman  with  a 
two-inch  wedge  sticking  from  under  her  dress  and 
letting  on  to  be  half  of  her  foot.  Polished  air-tight 
stove  (new  and  deadly  invention),  with  pipe  passing 
through  a  board  which  closes  up  the  discarded  good 
old  fireplace.  On  each  end  of  the  wooden  mantel, 
over  the  fireplace,  a  large  basket  of  peaches  and 
other  fruits,  natural  size,  all  done  in  plaster,  rudely, 
or  in  wax,  and  painted  to  resemble  the  originals — 
which  they  don't.  Over  middle  of  mantel,  engraving 
— "Washington  Crossing  the  Delaware  " ;  on  the  wall 
by  the  door,  copy  of  it  done  in  thunder-and-lightning 
crewels  by  one  of  the  young  ladies — work  of  art 
which  would  have  made  Washington  hesitate  about 
crossing,  if  he  could  have  foreseen  what  advantage 
was  going  to  be  taken  of  it.  Piano — kettle  in  dis- 
guise— with  music,  bound  and  unbound,  piled  on  it, 
and  on  a  stand  near  by:  "Battle  of  Prague";  "Bird 
Waltz";  "Arkansas  Traveler";  "Rosin  the  Bow"; 
"Marseillaise  Hymn";  "On  a  Lone  Barren  Isle" 
(St.  Helena);  "The  Last  Link  Is  Broken";  "She 
Wore  a  Wreath  of  Roses  the  Night  When  Last  We 
Met";  "Go,  Forget  Me,  Why  Should  Sorrow  o'er 
That  Brow  a  Shadow  Fling";  "Hours  That  Were 
to  Memory  Dearer";  "Long,  Long  Ago";  "Days 
318 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

of  Absence";  "A  Life  on  the  Ocean  Wave,  a  Home 
on  the  Rolling  Deep";  "Bird  at  Sea";  and  spread 
open  on  the  rack  where  the  plaintive  singer  has 
left  it,  "Ro-holl  on,  silver  w00-hoon,  guide  the  /ray- 
el-err  on  his  way,"  etc.  Tilted  pensively  against 
the  piano,  a  guitar — guitar  capable  of  playing  the 
Spanish  fandango  by  itself,  if  you  give  it  a  start. 
Frantic  work  of  art  on  the  wall — pious  motto,  done 
on  the  premises,  sometimes  in  colored  yarns,  some- 
times in  faded  grasses:  progenitor  of  the  "God 
Bless  Our  Home"  of  modern  commerce.  Framed 
in  black  moldings  on  the  wall,  other  works  of  art, 
conceived  and  committed  on  the  premises,  by  the 
young  ladies;  being  grim  black-and-white  crayons; 
landscapes,  mostly:  lake,  solitary  sailboat,  petrified 
clouds,  pregeological  trees  on  shore,  anthracite  preci- 
pice; name  of  criminal  conspicuous  in  the  corner. 
Lithograph,  "Napoleon  Crossing  the  Alps."  Litho- 
graph, "The  Grave  at  St.  Helena."  Steel  plates, 
TrumbulTs  "Battle  of  Bunker  Hill,"  and  the  "Sally 
from  Gibraltar. ' '  Copper  plates, ' '  Moses  Smiting  the 
Rock,"  and  "Return  of  the  Prodigal  Son."  In  big 
gilt  frame,  slander  of  the  family  in  oil :  papa  holding 
a  book  ("Constitution of  the  United  States");  guitar 
leaning  against  mamma,  blue  ribbons  fluttering 
from  its  neck;  the  young  ladies,  as  children,  in  slip- 
pers and  scalloped  pantalettes,  one  embracing  toy 
horse,  the  other  beguiling  kitten  with  ball  of  yarn, 
and  both  simpering  up  at  mamma,  who  simpers 
back.  These  persons  all  fresh,  raw,  and  red— 
apparently  skinned.  Opposite,  in  gilt  frame,  grand- 
pa and  grandma,  at  thirty  and  twenty-two,  stiff, 
319 


MARK     TWAIN 

old-fashioned,  high-collared,  puff-sleeved,  glaring 
pallidly  out  from  a  background  of  solid  Egyptian 
night.  Under,  a  glass  French  clock  dome,  large 
bouquet  of  stiff  flowers  done  in  corpsy-white  wax. 
Pyramidal  what-not  in  the  corner,  the  shelves  occu- 
pied chiefly  with  bric-a-brac  of  the  period,  disposed 
with  an  eye  to  best  effect:  shell,  with  the  Lord's 
Prayer  carved  on  it;  another  shell — of  the  long-oval 
sort,  narrow,  straight  orifice,  three  inches  long,  run- 
ning from  end  to  end — portrait  of  Washington  carved 
on  it;  not  well  done;  the  shell  had  Washington's 
mouth,  originally — artist  should  have  built  to  that. 
These  two  are  memorials  of  the  long-ago  bridal  trip 
to  New  Orleans  and  the  French  Market.  Other 
bric-a-brac:  Calif ornian  "specimens" — quartz,  with 
gold  wart  adhering;  old  Guinea-gold  locket,  with 
circlet  of  ancestral  hair  in  it ;  Indian  arrow-heads,  of 
flint;  pair  of  bead  moccasins,  from  uncle  who  crossed 
the  Plains;  three  "alum"  baskets  of  various  colors 
— being  skeleton-frame  of  wire,  clothed  on  with 
cubes  of  crystallized  alum  in  the  rock-candy  style — 
works  of  art  which  were  achieved  by  the  young 
ladies;  their  doubles  and  duplicates  to  be  found 
upon  all  what-nots  in  the  land;  convention  of  desic- 
cated bugs  and  butterflies  pinned  to  a  card;  painted 
toy  dog,  seated  upon  bellows  attachment — drops  its 
under- jaw  and  squeaks  when  pressed  upon;  sugar- 
candy  rabbit — limbs  and  features  merged  together, 
not  strongly  defined;  pewter  presidential-campaign 
medal;  miniature  cardboard  wood-sawyer,  to  be 
attached  to  the  stovepipe  and  operated  by  the  heat ; 
small  Napoleon,  done  in  wax ;  spread-open  daguerreo- 
320 


LIFE     ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

types  of  dim  children,  parents,  cousins,  aunts,  and 
friends,  in  all  attitudes  but  customary  ones;  no 
templed  portico  at  back,  and  manufactured  land- 
scape stretching  away  in  the  distance — that  came 
in  later,  with  the  photograph ;  all  these  vague  figures 
lavishly  chained  and  ringed — metal  indicated  and 
secured  from  doubt  by  stripes  and  splashes  of  vivid 
gold  bronze ;  all  of  them  too  much  combed,  too  much 
fixed  up ;  and  all  of  them  uncomfortable  in  inflexible 
Sunday  clothes  of  a  pattern  which  the  spectator 
cannot  realize  could  ever  have  been  in  fashion;  hus- 
band and  wife  generally  grouped  together — husband 
sitting,  wife  standing,  with  hand  on  his  shoulder — 
and  both  preserving,  all  these  fading  years,  some 
traceable  effect  of  the  daguerreotypist's  brisk  "Now 
smile,  if  you  please!"  Bracketed  over  what-not — 
place  of  special  sacredness — an  outrage  in  water- 
color,  done  by  the  young  niece  that  came  on  a  visit 
long  ago,  and  died.  Pity,  too;  for  she  might  have 
repented  of  this  in  time.  Horsehair  chairs,  horse- 
hair sofa  which  keeps  sliding  from  under  you. 
Window-shades,  of  oil  stuff,  with  milkmaids  and 
ruined  castles  stenciled  on  them  in  fierce  colors. 
Lambrequins  dependent  from  gaudy  boxings  of 
beaten  tin,  gilded.  Bedrooms  with  rag  carpets;  bed- 
steads of  the  "corded"  sort,  with  a  sag  in  the  mid- 
dle, the  cords  needing  tightening;  snuffy  feather-bed 
— not  aired  often  enough;  cane-seat  chairs,  splint- 
bottomed  rocker;  looking-glass  on  wall,  school-slate 
size,  veneered  frame;  inherited  bureau;  wash-bowl 
and  pitcher,  possibly — but  not  certainly;  brass 
candlestick,  tallow  candle,  snuffers.  Nothing  else  in 
321 


MARK     TWAIN 

the  room.  Not  a  bathroom  in  the  house;  and  no 
visitor  likely  to  come  along  who  has  ever  seen  one. 
That  was  the  residence  of  the  principal  citizen, 
all  the  way  from  the  suburbs  of  New  Orleans  to  the 
edge  of  St.  Louis.  When  he  stepped  aboard  a  big 
fine  steamboat,  he  entered  a  new  and  marvelous 
world:  chimney-tops  cut  to  counterfeit  a  spraying 
crown  of  plumes — and  maybe  painted  red;  pilot- 
house, hurricane-deck,  boiler-deck  guards,  all  gar- 
nished with  white  wooden  filigree-work  of  fanciful 
patterns;  gilt  acorns  topping  the  derricks;  gilt  deer- 
horns  over  the  big  bell ;  gaudy  symbolical  picture  on 
the  paddle-box,  possibly;  big  roomy  boiler -deck, 
painted  blue,  and  furnished  with  Windsor  arm- 
chairs; inside,  a  far-receding  snow-white  "cabin"; 
porcelain  knob  and  oil-picture  on  every  stateroom 
door;  curving  patterns  of  filigree- work  touched  up 
with  gilding,  stretching  overhead  all  down  the  con- 
verging vista;  big  chandeliers  every  little  way,  each 
an  April  shower  of  glittering  glass-drops;  lovely 
rainbow-light  falling  everywhere  from  the  colored 
glazing  of  the  skylights;  the  whole  a  long-drawn, 
resplendent  tunnel,  a  bewildering  and  soul-satisfying 
spectacle!  in  the  ladies'  cabin  a  pink  and  white 
Wilton  carpet,  as  soft  as  mush,  and  glorified  with  a 
ravishing  pattern  of  gigantic  flowers.  Then  the 
Bridal  Chamber — the  animal  that  invented  that 
idea  was  still  alive  and  unhanged,  at  that  day — 
Bridal  Chamber  whose  pretentious  flummery  was 
necessarily  overawing  to  the  now  tottering  intellect 
of  that  hosannahing  citizen.  Every  stateroom  had 
its  couple  of  cozy  clean  bunks,  and  perhaps  a 
322 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

looking-glass  and  a  snug  closet ;  and  sometimes  there 
was  even  a  wash-bowl  and  pitcher,  and  part  of  a 
towel  which  could  be  told  from  mosquito-netting  by 
an  expert — though  generally  these  things  were  ab- 
sent, and  the  shirt-sleeved  passengers  cleansed 
themselves  at  a  long  row  of  stationary  bowls  in  the 
barber  shop,  where  were  also  public  towels,  public 
combs,  and  public  soap. 

Take  the  steamboat  which  I  have  just  described, 
and  you  have  her  in  her  highest  and  finest,  and 
most  pleasing,  and  comfortable,  and  satisfactory 
estate.  Now  cake  her  over  with  a  layer  of  ancient 
and  obdurate  dirt,  and  you  have  the  Cincinnati 
steamer  awhile  ago  referred  to.  Not  all  over — only 
inside;  for  she  was  ably  officered  in  all  departments 
except  the  steward's. 

But  wash  that  boat  and  repaint  her,  and  she 
would  be  about  the  counterpart  of  the  most  com- 
plimented boat  of  the  old  flush  times :  for  the  steam- 
boat architecture  of  the  West  has  undergone  no 
change;  neither  has  steamboat  furniture  and  orna- 
mentation undergone  any. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 

MANUFACTURES   AND   MISCREANTS 

WHERE  the  river,  in  the  Vicksburg  region,  used 
to  be  corkscrewed,  it  is  now  comparatively 
straight — made  so  by  cut-off;  a  former  distance  of 
seventy  miles  is  reduced  to  thirty-five.  It  is  a 
change  which  threw  Vicksburg's  neighbor,  Delta, 
Louisiana,  out  into  the  country  and  ended  its  career 
as  a  river  town.  Its  whole  river-frontage  is  now 
occupied  by  a  vast  sand-bar,  thickly  covered  with 
young  trees — a  growth  which  will  magnify  itself 
into  a  dense  forest,  by  and  by,  and  completely  hide 
the  exiled  town. 

In  due  time  we  passed  Grand  Gulf  and  Rodney, 
of  war  fame,  and  reached  Natchez,  the  last  of  the 
beautiful  hill-cities — for  Baton  Rouge,  yet  to  come, 
is  not  on  a  hill,  but  only  on  high  ground.  Famous 
Natchez-under-the-hill  has  not  changed  notably  in 
twenty  years;  in  outward  aspect — judging  by  the 
descriptions  of  the  ancient  procession  of  foreign 
tourists — it  has  not  changed  in  sixty;  for  it  is  still 
small,  straggling,  and  shabby.  It  had  a  desperate 
reputation,  morally,  in  the  old  keelboating  and 
early  steamboating  times — plenty  of  drinking,  car- 
rousing,  fisticuffing,  and  killing  there,  among  the 
riffraff  of  the  river,  in  those  days.  But  Natchez- 
324 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

on-top-of-the-hill  is  attractive;  has  always  been 
attractive.  Even  Mrs.  Trollope  (1827)  had  to 
confess  its  charms: 

At  one  or  two  points  the  wearisome  level  line  is  relieved  by 
blu/s,  as  they  call  the  short  intervals  of  high  ground.  The  town 
of  Natchez  is  beautifully  situated  on  one  of  those  high  spots. 
The  contrast  that  its  bright  green  hill  forms  with  the  dismal 
line  of  black  forest  that  stretches  on  every  side,  the  abundant 
growth  of  the  pawpaw,  palmetto,  and  orange,  the  copious 
variety  of  sweet-scented  flowers  that  flourish  there,  all  make 
it  appear  like  an  oasis  in  the  desert.  Natchez  is  the  furthest 
point  to  the  north  at  which  oranges  ripen  in  the  open  air,  or 
endure  the  winter  without  shelter.  With  the  exception  of  this 
sweet  spot,  I  thought  all  the  little  towns  and  villages  we  passed 
wretched-looking  in  the  extreme. 

Natchez,  like  her  near  and  far  river  neighbors, 
has  railways  now,  and  is  adding  to  them — pushing 
them  hither  and  thither  into  all  rich  outlying  regions 
that  are  naturally  tributary  to  her.  And  like  Vicks- 
burg  and  New  Orleans,  she  has  her  ice  factory;  she 
makes  thirty  tons  of  ice  a  day.  In  Vicksburg  and 
Natchez,  in  my  time,  ice  was  jewelry;  none  but  the 
rich  could  wear  it.  But  anybody  and  everybody  can 
have  it  now.  I  visited  one  of  the  ice  factories  in 
New  Orleans,  to  see  what  the  polar  regions  might 
look  like  when  lugged  into  the  edge  of  the  tropics. 
But  there  was  nothing  striking  in  the  aspect  of  the 
place.  It  was  merely  a  spacious  house,  with  some 
innocent  steam  machinery  in  one  end  of  it  and  some 
big  porcelain  pipes  running  here  and  there.  No,  not 
porcelain — they  merely  seemed  to  be;  they  were 
iron,  but  the  ammonia  which  was  being  breathed 
through  them  had  coated  them  to  the  thickness  of 
325 


MARK    TWAIN 

your  hand  with  solid  milk-white  ice.  It  ought  to 
have  melted;  for  one  did  not  require  winter  clothing 
in  that  atmosphere:  but  it  did  not  melt;  the  inside 
of  the  pipe  was  too  cold. 

Sunk  into  the  floor  were  numberless  tin  boxes,  a 
foot  square  and  two  feet  long,  and  open  at  the  top 
end.  These  were  full  of  clear  water;  and  around 
each  box,  salt  and  other  proper  stuff  was  packed; 
also,  the  ammonia  gases  were  applied  to  the  water 
in  some  way  which  will  always  remain  a  secret  to 
me,  because  I  was  not  able  to  understand  the  process. 
While  the  water  in  the  boxes  gradually  froze,  men 
gave  it  a  stir  or  two  with  a  stick  occasionally — to 
liberate  the  air-bubbles,  I  think.  Other  men  were 
continually  lifting  out  boxes  whose  contents  had 
become  hard  frozen.  They  gave  the  box  a  single  dip 
into  a  vat  of  boiling  water,  to  melt  the  block  of  ice 
free  from  its  tin  coffin,  then  they  shot  the  block  out 
upon  a  platform  car,  and  it  was  ready  for  market. 
These  big  blocks  were  hard,  solid,  and  crystal-clear. 
In  certain  of  them,  big  bouquets  of  fresh  and  brilliant 
tropical  flowers  had  been  frozen  in ;  in  others,  beau- 
tiful silken-clad  French  dolls,  and  other  pretty 
objects.  These  blocks  were  to  be  set  on  end  in  a 
platter,  in  the  center  of  dinner-tables,  to  cool  the 
tropical  air;  and  also  to  be  ornamental,  for  the 
flowers  and  things  imprisoned  in  them  could  be 
seen  as  through  plate  glass.  I  was  told  that  this 
factory  could  retail  its  ice,  by  wagon,  throughout 
New  Orleans,  in  the  humblest  dwelling-house  quan- 
tities, at  six  or  seven  dollars  a  ton,  and  make  a  suffi- 
cient profit.  This  being  the  case,  there  is  business. 
326 


LIFE     ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

for  ice  factories  in  the  North;  for  we  get  ice  on  no 
such  terms  there,  if  one  take  less  than  three  hundred 
and  fifty  pounds  at  a  delivery. 

The  Rosalie  Yarn  Mill,  of  Natchez,  has  a  capacity 
of  6,000  spindles  and  160  looms,  and  employs  100 
hands.  The  Natchez  Cotton  Mills  Company  began 
operations  four  years  ago  in  a  two-story  building  of 
50  x  190  feet,  with  4,000  spindles  and  128  looms; 
capital  $105,000,  all  subscribed  in  the  town.  Two 
years  later,  the  same  stockholders  increased  their 
capital  to  $225,000;  added  a  third  story  to  the  mill, 
increased  its  length  to  317  feet;  added  machinery 
to  increase  the  capacity  to  10,300  spindles  and 
304  looms.  The  company  now  employ  250  opera- 
tives, many  of  whom  are  citizens  of  Natchez.  "The 
mill  works  5,000  bales  of  cotton  annually  and  manu- 
factures the  best  standard  quality  of  brown  shirtings 
and  sheetings  and  drills,  turning  out  5,000,000  yards 
of  these  goods  per  year."1  A  close  corporation — 
stock  held  at  $5,000  per  share,  but  none  in  the 
market. 

The  changes  in  the  Mississippi  River  are  great 
and  strange,  yet  were  to  be  expected;  but  I  was  not 
expecting  to  live  to  see  Natchez  and  these  other 
river  towns  become  manufacturing  strongholds  and 
railway-centers. 

Speaking  of  manufactures  reminds  me  of  a  talk 
upon  that  topic  which  I  heard — which  I  overheard— 
on  board  the  Cincinnati  boat.  I  awoke  out  of  a 
fretted  sleep,  with  a  dull  confusion  of  voices  in  my 
ears.  I  listened — two  men  were  talking;  subject, 

1  New  Orleans  Times-Democrat,  August  26,  1882. 
327 


MARK     TWAIN 

apparently,  the  great  inundation.  I  looked  out 
through  the  open  transom.  The  two  men  were 
eating  a  late  breakfast;  sitting  opposite  each  other; 
nobody  else  around.  They  closed  up  the  inundation 
with  a  few  words — having  used  it,  evidently,  as  a 
mere  ice-breaker  and  acquaintanceship-breeder — 
then  they  dropped  into  business.  It  soon  transpired 
that  they  were  drummers — one  belonging  in  Cin- 
cinnati, the  other  in  New  Orleans.  Brisk  men, 
energetic  of  movement  and  speech;  the  dollar  their 
god,  how  to  get  it  their  religion. 

"Now  as  to  this  article,"  said  Cincinnati,  slashing 
into  the  ostensible  butter  and  holding  forward  a 
slab  of  it  on  his  knife-blade,  "it's  from  our  house; 
look  at  it — smell  of  it — taste  it.  Put  any  test  on 
it  you  want  to.  Take  your  own  time — no  hurry — 
make  it  thorough.  There  now — what  do  you  say? 
butter,  ain't  it?  Not  by  a  thundering  sight — it's 
oleomargarine!  Yes,  sir,  that's  what  it  is — oleo- 
margarine. You  can't  tell  it  from  butter ;  by  George, 
an  expert  can't!  It's  from  our  house.  We  supply 
most  of  the  boats  in  the  West;  there's  hardly  a 
pound  of  butter  on  one  of  them.  We  are  crawling 
right  along — jumping  right  along  is  the  word.  We 
are  going  to  have  that  entire  trade.  Yes,  and  the 
hotel  trade,  too.  You  are  going  to  see  the  day, 
pretty  soon,  when  you  can't  find  an  ounce  of  butter 
to  bless  yourself  with,  in  any  hotel  in  the  Missis- 
sippi and  Ohio  valleys,  outside  of  the  biggest  cities. 
Why,  we  are  turning  out  oleomargarine  now  by  the 
thousands  of  tons.  And  we  can  sell  it  so  dirt-cheap 
that  the  whole  country  has  got  to  take  it — can't  get 
328 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

around  it,  you  see.  Butter  don't  stand  any  show — 
there  ain't  any  chance  for  competition.  Butter's 
had  its  day — and  from  this  out,  butter  goes  to  the 
wall.  There's  more  money  in  oleomargarine  than 
— why,  you  can't  imagine  the  business  we  do.  I've 
stopped  in  every  town,  from  Cincinnati  to  Natchez ; 
and  I've  sent  home  big  orders  from  every  one  of 
them." 

And  so  forth  and  so  on,  for  ten  minutes  longer, 
in  the  same  fervid  strain.  Then  New  Orleans  piped 
up  and  said : 

"Yes,  it's  a  first-rate  imitation,  that's  a  cer- 
tainty; but  it  ain't  the  only  one  around  that's  first- 
rate.  For  instance,  they  make  olive-oil  out  of 
cotton-seed  oil,  nowadays,  so  that  you  can't  tell 
them  apart." 

"Yes,  that's  so,"  responded  Cincinnati,  "and  it 
was  a  tip-top  business  for  a  while.  They  sent  it  over 
and  brought  it  back  from  France  and  Italy,  with  the 
United  States  custom-house  mark  on  it  to  indorse  it 
for  genuine,  and  there  was  no  end  of  cash  in  it ;  but 
France  and  Italy  broke  up  the  game — of  course  they 
naturally  would.  Cracked  on  such  a  rattling  impost 
that  cotton-seed  olive-oil  couldn't  stand  the  raise; 
had  to  hang  up  and  quit." 

"Oh,  it  did,  did  it?    You  wait  here  a  minute." 

Goes  to  his  stateroom,  brings  back  a  couple  of 
long  bottles,  and  takes  out  the  corks — says: 

"There  now,  smell  them,  taste  them,  examine  the 

bottles,    inspect    the    labels.     One    of    'm's    from 

Europe,  the  other's  never  been  out  of  this  country. 

One's    European    olive-oil,    the    other's    American 

329 


MARK    TWAIN 

cotton-seed  olive-oil.  Tell  'm  apart?  'Course  you 
can't.  Nobody  can.  People  that  want  to,  can  go 
to  the  expense  and  trouble  of  shipping  their  oils  to 
Europe  and  back — it's  their  privilege;  but  our  firm 
knows  a  trick  worth  six  of  that.  We  turn  out  the 
whole  thing — clean  from  the  word  go — in  our  factory 
in  New  Orleans:  labels,  bottles,  oil,  everything. 
Well,  no,  not  labels:  been  buying  them  abroad — get 
them  dirt-cheap  there.  You  see  there's  just  one 
little  wee  speck,  essence,  or  whatever  it  is,  in  a  gallon 
of  cotton-seed  oil,  that  gives  it  a  smell,  or  a  flavor, 
or  something — get  that  out,  and  you're  all  right — 
perfectly  easy  then  to  turn  the  oil  into  any  kind  of 
oil  you  want  to,  and  there  ain't  anybody  that  can 
detect  the  true  from  the  false.  Well,  we  know  how 
to  get  that  one  little  particle  out — and  we're  the 
only  firm  that  does.  And  we  turn  out  an  olive-oil 
that  is  just  simply  perfect — undetectable !  We  are 
doing  a  ripping  trade,  too — as  I  could  easily  show 
you  by  my  order-book  for  this  trip.  Maybe  you'll 
butter  everybody's  bread  pretty  soon,  but  we'll 
cotton-seed  his  salad  for  him  from  the  Gulf  to 
Canada,  that's  a  dead-certain  thing." 

Cincinnati  glowed  and  flashed  with  admiration. 
The  two  scoundrels  exchanged  business-cards,  and 
arose.  As  they  left  the  table,  Cincinnati  said: 

"But  you  have  to  have  custom-house  marks, 
don't  you?  How  do  you  manage  that?" 

I  did  not  catch  the  answer. 

We  passed  Port  Hudson,  scene  of  two  of  the 
most  terrific  episodes  of  the  war — the  night  battle 
there  between  Farragut's  fleet  and  the  Confederate 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

land  batteries,  April  14,  1863;  and  the  memorable 
land  battle,  two  months  later,  which  lasted  eight 
hours — eight  hours  of  exceptionally  fierce  and  stub- 
born fighting — and  ended,  finally,  in  the' repulse  of 
the  Union  forces  with  great  slaughter. 


CHAPTER  XL 

CASTLES   AND   CULTURE 

BATON  ROUGE  was  clothed  in  flowers,  like  a 
bride — no,  much  more  so;  like  a  greenhouse. 
For  we  were  in  the  absolute  South  now — no  modifi- 
cations, no  compromises,  no  half-way  measures. 
The  magnolia  trees  in  the  Capitol  grounds  were 
lovely  and  fragrant,  with  their  dense  rich  foliage  and 
huge  snowball  blossoms.  The  scent  of  the  flower  is 
very  sweet,  but  you  want  distance  on  it,  because 
it  is  so  powerful.  They  are  not  good  bedroom 
blossoms — they  might  suffocate  one  in  his  sleep. 
We  were  certainly  in  the  South  at  last ;  for  here  the 
sugar  region  begins,  and  the  plantations — vast  green 
levels,  with  sugar-mill  and  negro  quarters  clustered 
together  in  the  middle  distance — were  in  view.  And 
there  was  a  tropical  sun  overhead  and  a  tropical 
swelter  in  the  air. 

And  at  this  point,  also,  begins  the  pilot's  paradise : 
a  wide  river  hence  to  New  Orleans,  abundance  of 
water  from  shore  to  shore,  and  no  bars,  snags, 
sawyers,  or  wrecks  in  his  road. 

Sir  Walter  Scott  is  probably  responsible  for  the 

Capitol  building;  for  it  is  not  conceivable  that  this 

little  sham  castle  would  ever  have  been  built  if  he 

had  not  run  the  people  mad,  a  couple  of  generations 

332 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

ago,  with  his  medieval  romances.  The  South  has 
not  yet  recovered  from  the  debilitating  influence  of 
his  books.  Admiration  of  his  fantastic  heroes  and 
their  grotesque  "chivalry"  doings  and  romantic 
juvenilities  still  survives  here,  in  an  atmosphere  in 
which  is  already  perceptible  the  wholesome  and 
practical  nineteenth-century  smell  of  cotton  factories 
and  locomotives;  and  traces  of  its  inflated  language 
and  other  windy  humbuggeries  survive  along  with 
it.  It  is  pathetic  enough  that  a  whitewashed  castle, 
with  turrets  and  things — materials  all  ungenuine 
within  and  without,  pretending  to  be  what  they  are 
not — should  ever  have  been  built  in  this  otherwise 
honorable  place ;  but  it  is  much  more  pathetic  to  see 
this  architectural  falsehood  undergoing  restoration 
and  perpetuation  in  our  day,  when  it  would  have 
been  so  easy  to  let  dynamite  finish  what  a  chari- 
table fire  began,  and  then  devote  this  restoration 
money  to  the  building  of  something  genuine. 

Baton  Rouge  has  no  patent  on  imitation  castles, 
however,  and  no  monopoly  of  them.  The  following 
remark  is  from  the  advertisement  of  the  "Female 
Institute"  of  Columbia,  Tennessee: 

The  Institute  building  has  long  been  famed  as  a  model  of 
striking  and  beautiful  architecture.  Visitors  are  charmed  with 
its  resemblance  to  the  old  castles  of  song  and  story,  with  its 

towers,  turreted  walls,  and  ivy-mantled  porches. 

i 

Keeping  school  in  a  castle  is  a  romantic  thing;  as 
romantic  as  keeping  hotel  in  a  castle. 

By  itself  the  imitation  castle  is  doubtless  harm- 
less, and  well  enough;  but  as  a  symbol  and  breeder 
333 


MARK     TWAIN 

and  sustainer  of  maudlin  Middle-Age  romanticism 
here  in  the  midst  of  the  plainest  and  sturdiest  and 
infinitely  greatest  and  worthiest  of  all  the  centuries 
the  world  has  seen,  it  is  necessarily  a  hurtful  thing 
and  a  mistake. 

Here  is  an  extract  from  the  prospectus  of  a  Ken- 
tucky "Female  College."  Female  college  sounds 
well  enough;  but  since  the  phrasing  it  in  that  un- 
justifiable way  was  done  purely  in  the  interest  of 
brevity,  it  seems  to  me  that  she-college  would  have 
been  still  better — because  shorter,  and  means  the 
same  thing :  that  is,  if  either  phrase  means  anything 
at  all: 

The  president  is  Southern  by  birth,  by  rearing,  by  education, 
and  by  sentiment;  the  teachers  are  all  Southern  in  sentiment, 
and  with  the  exception  of  those  born  in  Europe  were  born  and 
raised  in  the  South.  Believing  the  Southern  to  be  the  highest 
type  of  civilization  this  continent  has  seen,1  the  young  ladies 

1  Illustrations  of  it  thoughtlessly  omitted  by  the  advertiser: 
"KNOXVILLE,  TENNESSEE,  October  19. — This  morning,  a  few  min- 
utes after  ten  o'clock,  General  Joseph  A.  Mabry,  Thomas  O'Connor, 
and  Joseph  A.  Mabry,  Jr.,  were  killed  in  a  shooting  affray.  The  diffi- 
culty began  yesterday  afternoon  by  General  Mabry  attacking  Major 
O'Connor  and  threatening  to  kill  him.  This  was  at  the  fair-grounds, 
and  O'Connor  told  Mabry  that  it  was  not  the  place  to  settle  their 
difficulties.  Mabry  then  told  O'Connor  he  should  not  live.  It 
seems  that  Mabry  was  armed  and  O'Connor  was  not.  The  cause 
of  the  difficulty  was  an  old  feud  about  the  transfer  of  some  property 
from  Mabry  to  O'Connor.  Later  in  the  afternoon  Mabry  sent  word 
to  O'Connor  that  he  would  kill  him  on  sight.  This  morning  Major 
O'Connor  was  standing  in  the  door  of  the  Mechanics'  National 
Bank,  of  which  he  was  president.  General  Mabry  and  another 
gentleman  walked  down  Gay  Street  on  the  opposite  side  from  the 
bank.  O'Connor  stepped  into  the  bank,  got  a  shotgun,  took  de- 
liberate aim  at  General  Mabry  and  fired.  Mabry  fell  dead,  being 
shot  in  the  left  side.  As  he  fell  O'Connor  fired  again,  the  shot 
taking  effect  in  Mabry's  thigh.  O'Connor  then  reached  into  the 

334 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

are  trained  according  to  the  Southern  ideas  of  delicacy,  refine- 
ment, womanhood,  religion,  and  propriety;  hence  we  offer  a 
first-class  female  college  for  the  South  and  solicit  Southern 
patronage. 

What,  warder,  ho !  the  man  that  can  blow  so  com- 
placent a  blast  as  that,  probably  blows  it  from  a  castle. 

From  Baton  Rouge  to  New  Orleans,  the  great 
sugar-plantations  border  both  sides  of  the  river  all 

bank  and  got  another  shotgun.  About  this  time,  Joseph  A.  Mabry, 
Jr.,  son  of  General  Mabry,  came  rushing  down  the  street,  unseen 
by  O'Connor  until  within  forty  feet,  when  the  young  man  fired  a 
pistol,  the  shot  taking  effect  in  O'Connor's  right  breast,  passing 
through  the  body  near  the  heart.  The  instant  Mabry  shot,  O'Con- 
nor turned  and  fired,  the  load  taking  effect  in  young  Mabry's  right 
breast  and  side.  Mabry  fell,  pierced  with  twenty  buckshot,  and 
almost  instantly  O'Connor  fell  dead  without  a  struggle.  Mabry 
tried  to  rise,  but  fell  back  dead.  The  whole  tragedy  occurred  within 
two  minutes,  and  neither  of  the  three  spoke  after  he  was  shot. 
General  Mabry  had  about  thirty  buckshot  in  his  body.  A  by- 
stander was  painfully  wounded  in  the  thigh  with  a  buckshot,  and 
another  was  wounded  in  the  arm.  Four  other  men  had  their  clothing 
pierced  by  buckshot.  The  affair  caused  great  excitement,  and 
Gay  Street  was  thronged  with  thousands  of  people.  General  Mabry 
and  his  son  Joe  were  acquitted  only  a  few  days  ago  of  the  murder 
of  Moses  Lusby  and  Don  Lusby,  father  and  son,  whom  they  killed 
a  few  weeks  ago.  Will  Mabry  was  killed  by  Don  Lusby  last  Christ- 
mas. Major  Thomas  O'Connor  was  President  of  the  Mechanics' 
National  Bank  here,  and  the  wealthiest  man  in  the  State."— 
Associated  Press  Telegram. 

"  One  day  last  month  Professor  Sharpe  of  the  Somerville,  Tennes- 
see Female  College,  'a  quiet  and  gentlemanly  man,'  was  told  that 
his  brother-in-law,  a  Captain  Burton,  had  threatened  to  kill  him. 
Burton,  it  seems,  had  already  killed  one  man  and  driven  his  knife 
into  another.  The  professor  armed  himself  with  a  double-barreled 
shotgun,  started  out  in  search  of  his  brother-in-law,  found  him 
playing  billiards  in  a  saloon,  and  blew  his  brains  out.  The  Memphis 
Avalanche  reports  that  the  professor's  course  met  with  pretty  general 
approval  in  the  community;  knowing  that  the  law  was  powerless, 
in  the  actual  condition  of  public  sentiment,  to  protect  him,  he 
protected  himself. 

"  About  the  same  time,  two  young  men  in  North  Carolina  quarreled 

335 


MARK     TWAIN 

the  way,  and  stretch  their  league-wide  levels  back 
to  the  dim  forest  walls  of  bearded  cypress  in  the 
rear.  Shores  lonely  no  longer.  Plenty  of  dwellings 
all  the  way,  on  both  banks — standing  so  close  to- 
gether, for  long  distances,  that  the  broad  river 
lying  between  the  two  rows  becomes  a  sort  of  spa- 
cious street.  A  most  homelike  and  happy-looking 
region.  And  now  and  then  you  see  a  pillared  and 
porticoed  great  manor-house,  embowered  in  trees. 
Here  is  testimony  of  one  or  two  of  the  procession 
of  foreign  tourists  that  filed  along  here  half  a  century 
ago.  Mrs.  Trollope  says: 

The  unbroken  flatness  of  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi  con- 
tinued unvaried  for  many  miles  above  New  Orleans;  but  the 
graceful  and  luxuriant  palmetto,  the  dark  and  noble  ilex,  and  the 
bright  orange  were  everywhere  to  be  seen,  and  it  was  many 
days  before  we  were  weary  of  looking  at  them. 


about  a  girl,  and  '  hostile  messages '  were  exchanged.  Friends  tried 
to  reconcile  them,  but  had  their  labor  for  their  pains.  On  the  24th 
the  young  men  met  in  the  public  highway.  One  of  them  had  a 
heavy  club  in  his  hand,  the  other  an  ax.  The  man  with  the  club 
fought  desperately  for  his  life,  but  it  was  a  hopeless  fight  from  the 
first.  A  well-directed  blow  sent  his  club  whirling  out  of  his  grasp, 
and  the  next  moment  he  was  a  dead  man. 

"About  the  same  time,  two  'highly  connected*  young  Virginians, 
clerks  in  a  hardware  store  at  Charlottesville,  while  'skylarking,' 
came  to  blows.  Peter  Dick  threw  pepper  in  Charles  Roads's  eyes; 
Roads  demanded  an  apology;  Dick  refused  to  give  it,  and  it  was 
agreed  that  a  duel  was  inevitable,  but  a  difficulty  arose;  the  parties 
had  no  pistols,  and  it  was  too  late  at  night  to  procure  them.  One 
of  them  suggested  that  butcher-knives  would  answer  the  purpose, 
and  the  other  accepted  the  suggestion;  the  result  was  that  Roads 
fell  to  the  floor  with  a  gash  in  his  abdomen  that  may  or  may  not 
prove  fatal.  If  Dick  has  been  arrested,  the  news  has  not  reached 
us.  He  'expressed  deep  regret,'  and  we  are  told  by  a  Staunton 
correspondent  of  the  Philadelphia  Press  that  'every  effort  has  been 
made  to  hush  the  matter  up.' " — Extracts  from  the  Public  Journals. 

336 


LIFE    ON    THE    MISSISSIPPI 
Captain  Basil  Hall: 

The  district  of  country  which  lies  adjacent  to  the  Mississippi, 
in  the  lower  parts  of  Louisiana,  is  everywhere  thickly  peopled 
by  sugar-planters,  whose  showy  houses,  gray  piazzas,  trig  gar- 
dens, and  numerous  slave  villages,  all  clean  and  neat,  gave  an 
exceedingly  thriving  air  to  the  river  scenery. 

All  the  procession  paint  the  attractive  picture  in 
the  same  way.  The  descriptions  of  fifty  years  ago 
do  not  need  to  have  a  word  changed  in  order  to 
exactly  describe  the  same  region  as  it  appears  to-day 
— except  as  to  the  "trigness"  of  the  houses.  The 
whitewash  is  gone  from  the  negro  cabins  now;  and 
many,  possibly  most,  of  the  big  mansions,  once  so 
shining  white,  have  worn  out  their  paint  and  have 
a  decayed,  neglected  look.  It  is  the  blight  of  the 
war.  Twenty-one  years  ago  everything  was  trim 
and  trig  and  bright  along  the  "coast,"  just  as  it 
had  been  in  1827,  as  described  by  those  tourists. 

Unfortunate  tourists!  People  humbugged  them 
with  stupid  and  silly  lies,  and  then  laughed  at  them 
for  believing  and  printing  the  same.  They  told 
Mrs.  Trollope  that  the  alligators — or  crocodiles,  as 
she  calls  them — were  terrible  creatures;  and  backed, 
up  the  statement  with  a  blood-curdling  account  of 
how  one  of  these  slandered  reptiles  crept  into  a 
squatter  cabin  one  night,  and  ate  up  a  woman  and 
five  children.  The  woman,  by  herself,  would  have 
satisfied  any  ordinarily  impossible  alligator;  but  no, 
these  liars  must  make  him  gorge  the  five  children 
besides.  One  would  not  imagine  that  jokers  of  this 
robust  breed  would  be  sensitive — but  they  were.  It 
is  difficult,  at  this  day,  to  understand,  and  impossi- 
337 


MARK     TWAIN 

ble  to  justify,  the  reception  which  the  book  of  the 
grave,  honest,  intelligent,  gentle,  manly,  charitable, 
well-meaning  Captain  Basil  Hall  got.  Mrs.  Trol- 
lope's  account  of  it  may  perhaps  entertain  the 
reader:  therefore,  I  have  put  it  in  the  Appendix.1 

1See  Appendix  C. 


CHAPTER  XLI 

THE   METROPOLIS   OF  THE   SOUTH 

THE  approaches  to  New  Orleans  were  familiar; 
general  aspects  were  unchanged.  When  one 
goes  flying  through  London  along  a  railway  propped 
in  the  air  on  tall  arches,  he  may  inspect  miles  of 
upper  bedrooms  through  the  open  windows,  but  the 
lower  half  of  the  houses  is  under  his  level  and  out 
of  sight.  Similarly,  in  high-river  stage,  in  the  New 
Orleans  region,  the  water  is  up  to  the  top  of  the 
inclosing  levee-rim,  the  flat  country  behind  it  lies 
low — representing  the  bottom  of  a  dish — and  as  the 
boat  swims  along,  high  on  the  flood,  one  looks  down 
upon  the  houses  and  into  the  upper  windows.  There 
is  nothing  but  that  frail  breastwork  of  earth  between 
the  people  and  destruction. 

The  old  brick  salt-warehouses  clustered  at  the 
upper  end  of  the  city  looked  as  they  had  always 
looked:  warehouses  which  had  had  a  kind  of  Alad- 
din's lamp  experience,  however,  since  I  had  seen 
them;  for  when  the  war  broke  out  the  proprietor 
went  to  bed  one  night  leaving  them  packed  with 
thousands  of  sacks  of  vulgar  salt,  worth  a  couple  of 
dollars  a  sack,  and  got  up  in  the  morning  and  found 
his  mountain  of  salt  turned  into  a  mountain  of 
gold,  so  to  speak,  so  suddenly  and  to  so  dizzy  a 
339 


MARK    TWAIN 

height  had  the  war  news  sent  up  the  price  of  the 
article. 

The  vast  reach  of  plank  wharves  remained  un- 
changed, and  there  were  as  many  ships  as  ever:  but 
the  long  array  of  steamboats  had  vanished;  not 
altogether,  of  course,  but  not  much  of  it  was  left. 

The  city  itself  had  not  changed — to  the  eye.  It 
had  greatly  increased  in  spread  and  population,  but 
the  look  of  the  town  was  not  altered.  The  dust, 
waste-paper-littered,  was  still  deep  in  the  streets ;  the 
deep  troughlike  gutters  along  the  curbstones  were 
still  half  full  of  reposeful  water  with  a  dusty  surface ; 
the  sidewalks  were  still — in  the  sugar  and  bacon 
region — encumbered  by  casks  and  barrels  and  hogs- 
heads ;  the  great  blocks  of  austerely  plain  commercial 
houses  were  as  dusty-looking  as  ever. 

Canal  Street  was  finer  and  more  attractive  and 
stirring  than  formerly,  with  its  drifting  crowds  of 
people,  its  several  processions  of  hurrying  street-cars, 
and — toward  evening — its  broad  second-story  ver- 
andas crowded  with  gentlemen  and  ladies  clothed 
according  to  the  latest  mode. 

Not  that  there  is  any  "architecture"  in  Canal 
Street:  to  speak  in  broad,  general  terms,  there  is 
no  architecture  in  New  Orleans,  except  in  the  ceme- 
teries. It  seems  a  strange  thing  to  say  of  a  wealthy, 
far-seeing,  and  energetic  city  of  a  quarter  of  a  million 
inhabitants,  but  it  is  true.  There  is  a  huge  granite 
United  States  custom-house — costly  enough,  genuine 
enough,  but  as  to  decoration  it  is  inferior  to  a  gas- 
ometer. It  looks  like  a  state  prison.  But  it  was 
built  before  the  war.  Architecture  in  America  may 
340 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

be  said  to  have  been  born  since  the  war.  New 
Orleans,  I  believe,  has  had  the  good  luck — and  in  a 
sense  the  bad  luck — to  have  had  no  great  fire  in  late 
years.  It  must  be  so.  If  the  opposite  had  been  the 
case,  I  think  one  would  be  able  to  tell  the  "burnt 
district"  by  the  radical  improvement  in  its  archi- 
tecture over  the  old  forms.  One  can  do  this  in 
Boston  and  Chicago.  The  "burnt  district"  of  Bos- 
ton was  commonplace  before  the  fire;  but  now  there 
is  no  commercial  district  in  any  city  in  the  world 
that  can  surpass  it — or  perhaps  even  rival  it — in 
beauty,  elegance,  and  tastefulness. 

However,  New  Orleans  has  begun — just  this  mo- 
ment, as  one  may  say.  When  completed,  the  new  Cot- 
ton Exchange  will  be  a  stately  and  beautiful  building : 
massive,  substantial,  full  of  architectural  graces;  no 
shams  or  false  pretenses  or  uglinesses  about  it  any- 
where. To  the  city  it  will  be  worth  many  times  its 
cost,  for  it  will  breed  its  species.  What  has  been  lack- 
ing hitherto  was  a  model  to  build  toward,  something 
to  educate  eye  and  taste :  a  suggester,  so  to  speak. 

The  city  is  well  outfitted  with  progressive  men — 
thinking,  sagacious,  long-headed  men.  The  con- 
trast between  the  spirit  of  the  city  and  the  city's 
architecture  is  like  the  contrast  between  waking  and 
sleep.  Apparently  there  is  a  "boom"  in  everything 
but  that  one  dead  feature.  The  water  in  the  gutters 
used  to  be  stagnant  and  slimy,  and  a  potent  disease- 
breeder;  but  the  gutters  are  flushed  now  two  or  three 
times  a  day  by  powerful  machinery;  in  many  of  the 
gutters  the  water  never  stands  still,  but  has  a  steady 
current.  Other  sanitary  improvements  have  been 


MARK     TWAIN 

made ;  and  with  such  effect  that  New  Orleans  claims 
to  be  (during  the  long  intervals  between  the  occasion- 
al yellow-fever  assaults)  one  of  the  healthiest  cities 
in  the  Union.  There's  plenty  of  ice  now  for  every- 
body, manufactured  in  the  town.  It  is  a  driving 
place  commercially,  and  has  a  great  river,  ocean, 
and  railway  business.  At  the  date  of  our  visit  it 
was  the  best-lighted  city  in  the  Union,  electrically 
speaking.  The  New  Orleans  electric  lights  were 
more  numerous  than  those  of  New  York,  and  very 
much  better.  One  had  this  modified  noonday  not 
only  in  Canal  and  some  neighboring  chief  streets, 
but  all  along  a  stretch  of  five  miles  of  river-frontage. 
There  are  good  clubs  in  the  city  now — several  of 
them  but  recently  organized — and  inviting  modern- 
style  pleasure  resorts  at  West  End  and  Spanish  Fort. 
The  telephone  is  everywhere.  One  of  the  most 
notable  advances  is  in  journalism.  The  news- 
papers, as  I  remember  them,  were  not  a  striking 
feature.  Now  they  are.  Money  is  spent  upon  them 
with  a  free  hand.  They  get  the  news,  let  it  cost 
what  it  may.  The  editorial  work  is  not  hack-grind- 
ing, but  literature.  As  an  example  of  New  Orleans 
journalistic  achievement,  it  may  be  mentioned  that 
the  Times-Democrat  of  August  26,  1882,  contained 
a  report  of  the  year's  business  of  the  towns  of  the 
Mississippi  valley,  from  New  Orleans  all  the  way 
to  St.  Paul — two  thousand  miles.  That  issue  of  the 
paper  consisted  of  forty  pages;  seven  columns  to  the 
page;  two  hundred  and  eighty  columns  in  all;  fifteen 
hundred  words  to  the  column;  an  aggregate  of  four, 
hundred  and  twenty  thousand  words.  That  is  to 
342 


LIFE     ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

say,  not  much  short  of  three  times  as  many  words 
as  are  in  this  book.  One  may  with  sorrow  contrast 
this  with  the  architecture  of  New  Orleans. 

I  have  been  speaking  of  public  architecture  only. 
The  domestic  article  in  New  Orleans  is  reproachless, 
notwithstanding  it  remains  as  it  always  was.  All 
the  dwellings  are  of  wood — in  the  American  part  of 
the  town,  I  mean — and  all  have  a  comfortable  look. 
Those  in  the  wealthy  quarter  are  spacious;  painted 
snow-white  usually,  and  generally  have  wide  ver- 
andas, or  double  verandas,  supported  by  ornamental 
columns.  These  mansions  stand  in  the  center  of 
large  grounds,  and  rise,  garlanded  with  roses,  out 
of  the  midst  of  swelling  masses  of  shining  green 
foliage  and  many-colored  blossoms.  No  houses 
could  well  be  in  better  harmony  with  their  surround- 
ings, or  more  pleasing  to  the  eye,  or  more  homelike 
and  comfortable-looking. 

One  even  becomes  reconciled  to  the  cistern  pres- 
ently; this  is  a  mighty  cask,  painted  green,  and 
sometimes  a  couple  of  stories  high,  which  is  propped 
against  the  house-corner  on  stilts.  There  is  a 
mansion-and-brewery  suggestion  about  the  combina- 
tion which  seems  very  incongruous  at  first.  But  the 
people  cannot  have  wells,  and  so  they  take  rain- 
water. Neither  can  they  conveniently  have  cellars 
or  graves,1  the  town  being  built  upon  "made" 
ground;  so  they  do  without  both,  and  few  of  the 
living  complain,  and  none  of  the  others. 

1The  Israelites  are  buried  in  graves — by  permission,  I  take  it,  not 
requirement;  but  none  else,  except  the  destitute,  who  are  buried  at 
public  expense.  The  graves  are  but  three  or  four  feet  deep. 

343 


CHAPTER  XLII 

HYGIENE   AND    SENTIMENT 

THEY  bury  their  dead  in  vaults,  above  the 
ground.  These  vaults  have  a  resemblance  to 
houses — sometimes  to  temples;  are  built  of  marble, 
generally;  are  architecturally  graceful  and  shapely; 
they  face  the  walks  and  driveways  of  the  cemetery; 
and  when  one  moves  through  the  midst  of  a  thousand 
or  so  of  them,  and  sees  their  white  roofs  and  gables 
stretching  into  the  distance  on  every  hand,  the  phrase 
"city  of  the  dead"  has  all  at  once  a  meaning  to  him. 
Many  of  the  cemeteries  are  beautiful  and  are  kept 
in  perfect  order.  When  one  goes  from  the  levee  or 
the  business  streets  near  it,  to  a  cemetery,  he  ob- 
serves to  himself  that  if  those  people  down  there 
would  live  as  neatly  while  they  are  alive  as  they  do 
after  they  are  dead,  they  would  find  many  advan- 
tages in  it;  and  besides,  their  quarter  would  be  the 
wonder  and  admiration  of  the  business  world.  Fresh 
flowers,  in  vases  of  water,  are  to  be  seen  at  the 
portals  of  many  of  the  vaults:  placed  there  by  the 
pious  hands  of  bereaved  parents  and  children,  hus- 
bands and  wives,  and  renewed  daily.  A  milder  form 
of  sorrow  finds  its  inexpensive  and  lasting  remem- 
brancer in  the  coarse  and  ugly  but  indestructible 
"immortelle" — which  is  a  wreath  or  cross  or  some 
344 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

such  emblem,  made  of  rosettes  of  black  linen,  with 
sometimes  a  yellow  rosette  at  the  junction  of  the 
cross's  bars — kind  of  sorrowful  breastpin,  so  to  say. 
The  immortelle  requires  no  attention :  you  just  hang 
it  up,  and  there  you  are;  just  leave  it  alone,  it  will 
take  care  of  your  grief  for  you,  and  keep  it  in  mind 
better  than  you  can;  stands  weather  first-rate,  and 
lasts  like  boiler-iron. 

On  sunny  days,  pretty  little  chameleons — grace- 
fulest  of  legged  reptiles — creep  along  the  marble 
fronts  of  the  vaults,  and  catch  flies.  Their  changes 
of  color — as  to  variety — are  not  up  to  the  creature's 
reputation.  They  change  color  when  a  person 
comes  along  and  hangs  up  an  immortelle;  but  that 
is  nothing:  any  right-feeling  reptile  would  do  that. 

I  will  gradually  drop  this  subject  of  graveyards. 
I  have  been  trying  all  I  could  to  get  down  to  the 
sentimental  part  of  it,  but  I  cannot  accomplish  it. 
I  think  there  is  no  genuinely  sentimental  part  to  it. 
It  is  all  grotesque,  ghastly,  horrible.  Graveyards 
may  have  been  justifiable  in  the  bygone  ages,  when 
nobody  knew  that  for  every  dead  body  put  into 
the  ground,  to  glut  the  earth  and  the  plant-roots  and 
the  air  with  disease-germs,  five  or  fifty,  or  maybe  a 
hundred,  persons  must  die  before  their  proper  time; 
but  they  are  hardly  justifiable  now,  when  even  the 
children  know  that  a  dead  saint  enters  upon  an 
century -long  career  of  assassination  the  moment  thej  / 
earth  closes  over  his  corpse.  It  is  a  grim  sort  of  a|/ 
thought.  The  relics  of  St.  Anne,  up  in  Canada,  have 
now,  after  nineteen  hundred  years,  gone  to  curing 
the  sick  by  the  dozen.  But  it  is  merest  matter-of- 
345 


MARK     TWAIN 

course  that  these  same  relics,  within  a  generation 
after  St.  Anne's  death  and  burial,  made  several  thou- 
sand people  sick.  Therefore  these  miracle-perform- 
ances are  simply  compensation,  nothing  more.  St. 
Anne  is  somewhat  slow  pay,  for  a  Saint,  it  is  true; 
but  better  a  debt  paid  after  nineteen  hundred  years, 
and  outlawed  by  the  statute  of  limitations,  than  not 
'paid  at  all;  and  most  of  the  knights  of  the  halo  do 
not  pay  at  all.  Where  you  find  one  that  pays — like 
St.  Anne — you  find  a  hundred  and  fifty  that  take 
the  benefit  of  the  statute.  And  none  of  them  pay 
any  more  than  the  principal  of  what  they  owe — they 
pay  none  of  the  interest  either  simple  or  compound. 
A  Saint  can  never  quite  return  the  principal,  how- 
ever, for  his  dead  body  kills  people,  whereas  his  relics 
heal  only — they  never  restore  the  dead  to  life.  That 
part  of  the  account  is  always  left  unsettled. 

Dr.  F.  Julius  Le  Moyne,  after  fifty  years  of  medical  practice, 
wrote:  "The  inhumation  of  human  bodies,  dead  from  infectious 
diseases,  results  in  constantly  loading  the  atmosphere,  and 
polluting  the  waters,  with  not  only  the  germs  that  rise  from 
simply  putrefaction,  but  also  with  the  specific  germs  of  the 
diseases  from  which  death  resulted." 

The  gases  (from  buried  corpses)  will  rise  to  the  surface  through 
eight  or  ten  feet  of  gravel,  just  as  coal-gas  will  do,  and  there  is 
practically  no  limit  to  their  power  of  escape. 

During  the  epidemic  in  New  Orleans  in  1853,  Dr.  E.  H.  Barton 
reported  that  in  the  Fourth  District  the  mortality  was  four 
hundred  and  fifty-two  per  thousand — more  than  double  that  of 
any  other.  In  this  district  were  three  large  cemeteries,  in  which 
during  the  previous  year  more  than  three  thousand  bodies  had 
been  buried.  In  other  districts  the  proximity  of  cemeteries 
seemed  to  aggravate  the  disease. 

In  1828  Professor  Bianchi  demonstrated  how  the  fearful  re- 
appearance of  the  plague  at  Modena  was  caused  by  excavations 
346 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

in  ground  where,  three  hundred  years  previously,  the  victims  of 
the  pestilence  had  been  buried.  Mr.  Cooper,  in  explaining  the 
causes  of  some  epidemics,  remarks  that  the  opening  of  the  plague 
burial-grounds  at  Eyam  resulted  in  an  immediate  outbreak  of 
disease. — North  American  Review,  No.  j,  Vol.  135. 

In  an  address  before  the  Chicago  Medical  Society, 
in  advocacy  of  cremation,  Dr.  Charles  W.  Purdy 
made  some  striking  comparisons  to  show  what  a 
burden  is  laid  upon  society  by  the  burial  of  the  dead: 

One  and  one-fourth  times  more  money  is  expended  annually 
in  funerals  in  the  United  States  than  the  government  expends 
for  public-school  purposes.  Funerals  cost  this  country  in  1880 
enough  money  to  pay  the  liabilities  of  all  the  commercial  failures 
in  the  United  States  during  the  same  year,  and  give  each  bank- 
rupt a  capital  of  eight  thousand  six  hundred  and  thirty  dollars 
with  which  to  resume  business.  Funerals  cost  annually  more 
money  than  the  value  of  the  combined  gold  and  silver  yield  of 
the  United  States  in  the  year  1880.  These  figures  do  not  include 
the  sums  invested  in  burial-grounds  and  expended  in  tombs  and 
monuments,  nor  the  loss  from  depreciation  of  property  in  the 
vicinity  of  cemeteries. 

For  the  rich,  cremation  would  answer  as  well  as 
burial;  for  the  ceremonies  connected  with  it  could 
be  made  as  costly  and  ostentatious  as  a  Hindu  suttee; 
while  for  the  poor,  cremation  would  be  better  than 
burial,  because  so  cheap1 — so  cheap  until  the  poor 
got  to  imitating  the  rich,  which  they  would  do  by 
and  by.  The  adoption  of  cremation  would  relieve 
us  of  a  muck  of  threadbare  burial  witticisms;  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  would  resurrect  a  lot  of  mil- 
dewed old  cremation  jokes  that  have  had  a  rest  for 
two  thousand  years. 

I  have  a  colored  acquaintance  who  earns  his  living 

1  Four  or  five  dollars  is  the  minimum  cost. 
347 


MARK     TWAIN 

by  odd  jobs  and  heavy  manual  labor.  He  never 
earns  above  four  hundred  dollars  in  a  year,  and  as 
he  has  a  wife  and  several  young  children,  the  closest 
scrimping  is  necessary  to  get  him  through  to  the  end 
of  the  twelve  months  debtless.  To  such  a  man  a 
funeral  is  a  colossal  financial  disaster.  While  I  was 
writing  one  of  the  preceding  chapters,  this  man  lost 
a  little  child.  He  walked  the  town  over  with  a 
friend,  trying  to  find  a  coffin  that  was  within  his 
means.  He  bought  the  very  cheapest  one  he  could 
find,  plain  wood,  stained.  It  cost  him  twenty-six 
dollars.  It  would  have  cost  less  than  four,  probably, 
if  it  had  been  built  to  put  something  useful  into. 
He  and  his  family  will  feel  that  outlay  a  good  many 
months. 


CHAPTER  XLIII 

THE   ART   OF    INHUMATION 

A 5  OUT  the  same  time  I  encountered  a  man  in 
the  street  whom  I  had  not  seen  for  six  or  seven 
years ;  and  something  like  this  talk  followed.  I  said : 

"But  you  used  to  look  sad  and  oldish;  you  don't 
now.  Where  did  you  get  all  this  youth  and  bubbling 
cheerfulness?  Give  me  the  address." 

He  chuckled  blithely,  took  off  his  shining  tile, 
pointed  to  a  notched  pink  circlet  of  paper  pasted  into 
its  crown,  with  something  lettered  on  it,  and  went 
on  chuckling  while  I  read,  "J.  B.,  UNDERTAKER." 
Then  he  clapped  his  hat  on,  gave  it  an  irreverent 
tilt  to  leeward,  and  cried  out : 

"That's  what's  the  matter!  It  used  to  be  rough 
times  with  me  when  you  knew  me — insurance-agency 
business,  you  know;  mighty  irregular.  Big  fire,  all 
right — brisk  trade  for  ten  days  while  people  scared; 
after  that,  dull  policy  business  till  next  fire.  Town 
like  this  don't  have  fires  often  enough — a  fellow 
strikes  so  many  dull  weeks  in  a  row  that  he  gets 
discouraged.  But  you  bet  you,  this  is  the  business! 
People  don't  wait  for  examples  to  die.  No,  sir,  they 
drop  off  right  along— there  ain't  any  dull  spots  in 
the  undertaker  line.  I  just  started  in  with  two  or 
three  little  old  coffins  and  a  hired  hearse,  and  now 
349 


MARK     TWAIN 

look  at  the  thing!  I've  worked  up  a  business  here 
that  would  satisfy  any  man,  don't  care  who  he  is. 
Five  years  ago,  lodged  in  an  attic;  live  in  a  swell 
house  now,  with  a  mansard  roof,  and  all  the  modern 
inconveniences. ' ' 

"Does  a  coffin  pay  so  well?  Is  there  much  profit 
on  a  coffin?" 

"(Jo-way!  How  you  talk!"  Then,  with  a  confi- 
dential wink,  a  dropping  of  the  voice,  and  an  im- 
pressive laying  of  his  hand  on  my  arm:  "Look  here; 
there's  one  thing  in  this  world  which  isn't  ever  cheap. 
That's  a  coffin.  There's  one  thing  in  this  world 
which  a  person  don't  ever  try  to  jew  you  down  on. 
That's  a  coffin.  There's  one  thing  in  this  world 
which  a  person  don't  say — 'I'll  look  around  a  little, 
and  if  I  find  I  can't  do  better  I'll  come  back  and 
take  it/  That's  a  coffin.  There's  one  thing  in  this 
world  which  a  person  won't  take  in  pine  if  he  can 
go  walnut;  and  won't  take  in  walnut  if  he  can  go 
mahogany;  and  won't  take  in  mahogany  if  he  can 
go  an  iron  casket  with  silver  door-plate  and  bronze 
handles.  That's  a  coffin.  And  there's  one  thing  in 
this  world  which  you  don't  have  to  worry  around 
after  a  person  to  get  him  to  pay  for.  And  that's  a 
coffin.  Undertaking  ?  —  why  it's  the  dead-surest 
business  in  Christendom,  and  the  nobbiest. 

"Why,  just  look  at  it.  A  rich  man  won't  have 
anything  but  your  very  best;  and  you  can  just  pile 
it  on,  too — pile  it  on  and  sock  it  to  him — he  won't 
ever  holler.  And  you  take  in  a  poor  man,  and  if 
you  work  him  right  he'll  bust  himself  on  a  single 
lay-out.  Or  especially  a  woman.  F'r  instance:  Mrs. 
35o 


LIFE    ON     THE    MISSISSIPPI 

O'Flaherty  comes  in — widow — wiping  her  eyes  and 
kind  of  moaning.  Unhandkerchiefs  one  eye,  bats  it 
around  tearfully  over  the  stock;  says: 

"'And  fhat  might  ye  ask  for  that  wan?' 

"'Thirty-nine  dollars,  madam,'  says  I. 

"'It's  a  foine  big  price,  sure,  but  Pat  shall  be 
buried  like  a  gintleman,  as  he  was,  if  I  have  to  work 
me  fingers  off  for  it.  I'll  have  that  wan,  sor.' 

" '  Yes,  madam,'  says  I,  'and  it  is  a  very  good  one, 
too;  not  costly,  to  be  sure,  but  in  this  life  we  must 
cut  our  garments  to  our  cloth,  as  the  saying  is.' 
And  as  she  starts  out,  I  heave  in,  kind  of  casually, 
'This  one  with  the  white  satin  lining  is  a  beauty, 
but  I  am  afraid — well,  sixty-five  dollars  is  a  rather — 
rather — but  no  matter,  I  felt  obliged  to  say  to  Mrs. 
O'Shaughnessy— ' 

"'D'ye  mane  to  soy  that  Bridget  O'Shaughnessy 
bought  the  mate  to  that  joo-ul  box  to  ship  that 
dhrunken  divil  to  Purgatory  in?' 
'  'Yes,  madam.' 

'"Then  Pat  shall  go  to  heaven  in  the  twin  to  it, 
if  it  takes  the  last  rap  the  O'Flahertys  can  raise; 
and  moind  you,  stick  on  some  extras,  too,  and  I'll 
give  ye  another  dollar.' 

"And  as  I  lay  in  with  the  livery  stables,  of  course 
I  don't  forget  to  mention  that  Mrs.  O'Shaughnessy 
hired  fifty-four  dollars'  worth  of  hacks  and  flung  as 
much  style  into  Dennis's  funeral  as  if  he  had  been 
a  duke  or  an  assassin.  And  of  course  she  sails  in 
and  goes  the  O'Shaughnessy  about  four  hacks  and 
an  omnibus  better.  That  used  to  be,  but  that's  all 
played  now;  that  is,  in  this  particular  town.  The 


MARK     TWAIN 

Irish  got  to  piling  up  hacks  so,  on  their  funerals,  that 
a  funeral  left  them  ragged  and  hungry  for  two  years 
afterward;  so  the  priest  pitched  in  and  broke  it  all 
up.  He  don't  allow  them  to  have  but  two  hacks 
now,  and  sometimes  only  one." 

"Well,"  said  I,  "if  you  are  so  light-hearted  and 
jolly  in  ordinary  times,  what  must  you  be  in  an 
epidemic?" 

He  shook  his  head. 

"No,  you're  off,  there.  We  don't  like  to  see  an 
epidemic.  An  epidemic  don't  pay.  Well,  of  course 
I  don't  mean  that,  exactly;  but  it  don't  pay  in 
proportion  to  the  regular  thing.  Don't  it  occur 
to  you  why?" 

"No." 

"Think." 

"I  can't  imagine.     What  is  it?" 

"It's  just  two  things." 

"Well,  what  are  they?" 

"One's  Embamming." 

"And  what's  the  other?" 

"Ice." 

"How  is  that?" 

"Well,  in  ordinary  times,  a  person  dies,  and  we  lay 
him  up  in  ice;  one  day,  two  days,  maybe  three,  to 
wait  for  friends  to  come.  Takes  a  lot  of  it — melts 
fast.  We  charge  jewelry  rates  for  that  ice,  and  war 
prices  for  attendance.  Well,  don't  you  know,  when 
there's  an  epidemic,  they  rush  'em  to  the  cemetery 
the  minute  the  breath's  out.  No  market  for  ice  in 
an  epidemic.  Same  with  Embamming.  You  take  a 
family  that's  able  to  embam,  and  you've  got  a  soft 
352 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

thing.  You  can  mention  sixteen  different  ways  to 
do  it — though  there  ain't  only  one  or  two  ways,  when 
you  come  down  to  the  bottom  facts  of  it — and 
they'll  take  the  highest -priced  way,  every  time.  It's 
human  nature — human  nature  in  grief.  It  don't 

reason,  you  see.     Time  being,  it  don't  care  a  d n. 

All  it  wants  is  physical  immortality  for  deceased,  and 
they're  willing  to  pay  for  it.  All  you've  got  to  do 
is  to  just  be  ca'm  and  stack  it  up — they'll  stand  the 
racket.  Why,  man,  you  can  take  a  defunct  that  you 
couldn't  give  away;  and  get  your  embamming  traps 
around  you  and  go  to  work;  and  in  a  couple  of  hours 
he  is  worth  a  cool  six  hundred — that's  what  he's 
worth.  There  ain't  anything  equal  to  it  but  trading 
rats  for  diamonds  in  time  of  famine.  Well,  don't 
you  see,  when  there's  an  epidemic,  people  don't  wait 
to  embam.  No,  indeed  they  don't;  and  it  hurts  the 
business  like  hellth,  as  we  say — hurts  it  like  hell-th, 
health,  see? — our  little  joke  in  the  trade.  Well,  I 
must  be  going.  Give  me  a  call  whenever  you  need 
any — I  mean,  when  you're  going  by,  some  time." 

In  his  joyful  high  spirits,  he  did  the  exaggerating 
himself,  if  any  had  been  done.  I  have  not  enlarged 
on  him. 

With  the  above  brief  references  to  inhumation,  let 
us  leave  the  subject.  As  for  me,  I  hope  to  be 
cremated.  I  made  that  remark  to  my  pastor  once, 
who  said,  with  what  he  seemed  to  think  was  an  im- 
pressive manner: 

' '  I  wouldn't  worry  about  that,  if  I  had  your  chances." 

Much  he  knew  about  it — the  family  all  so  op- 
posed to  it. 

353 


CHAPTER  XLIV 

CITY   SIGHTS 

THE  old  French  part  of  New  Orleans — anciently 
the  Spanish  part — bears  no  resemblance  to  the 
American  end  of  the  city:  the  American  end  which 
lies  beyond  the  intervening  brick  business  center. 
The  houses  are  massed  in  blocks;  are  austerely  plain 
and  dignified;  uniform  of  pattern,  with  here  and 
there  a  departure  from  it  with  pleasant  effect ;  all  are 
plastered  on  the  outside,  and  nearly  all  have  long, 
iron-railed  verandas  running  along  the  several  stories. 
Their  chief  beauty  is  the  deep,  warm,  varicolored 
stain  with  which  time  and  the  weather  have  enriched 
the  plaster.  It  harmonizes  with  all  the  surround- 
ings, and  has  as  natural  a  look  of  belonging  there  as 
has  the  flush  upon  sunset  clouds.  This  charming 
decoration  cannot  be  successfully  imitated;  neither 
is  it  to  be  found  elsewhere  in  America. 

The  iron  railings  are  a  specialty,  also.  The  pat- 
tern is  often  exceedingly  light  and  dainty,  and  airy 
and  graceful — with  a  large  cipher  or  monogram  in  the 
center,  a  delicate  cobweb  of  baffling,  intricate  forms, 
wrought  in  steel.  The  ancient  railings  are  hand- 
made, and  are  now  comparatively  rare  and  propor- 
tionately valuable.  They  are  become  bric-a-brac. 

The  party  had  the  privilege  of  idling  through  this 
354 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

ancient  quarter  of  New  Orleans  with  the  South's 
finest  literary  genius,  the  author  of  The  Grandis- 
simes.  In  him  the  South  has  found  a  masterly 
delineator  of  its  interior  life  and  its  history.  In 
truth,  I  find  by  experience,  that  the  untrained  eye 
and  vacant  mind  can  inspect  it  and  learn  of  it  and 
judge  of  it  more  clearly  and  profitably  in  his  books 
than  by  personal  contact  with  it. 

With  Mr.  Cable  along  to  see  for  you,  and  describe 
and  explain  and  illuminate,  a  jog  through  that  old 
quarter  is  a  vivid  pleasure.  And  you  have  a  vivid 
sense  as  of  unseen  or  dimly  seen  things — vivid,  and 
yet  fitful  and  darkling;  you  glimpse  salient  features, 
but  lose  the  fine  shades  or  catch  them  imperfectly 
through  the  vision  of  the  imagination:  a  case,  as  it 
were,  of  an  ignorant,  near-sighted  stranger  traversing 
the  rim  of  wide,  vague  horizons  of  Alps  with  an 
inspired  and  enlightened  long-sighted  native. 

We  visited  the  old  St.  Louis  Hotel,  now  occupied 
by  municipal  offices.  There  is  nothing  strikingly 
remarkable  about  it ;  but  one  can  say  of  it  as  of  the 
Academy  of  Music  in  New  York,  that  if  a  broom  or 
a  shovel  has  ever  been  used  in  it  there  is  no  circum- 
stantial evidence  to  back  up  the  fact.  It  is  curious 
that  cabbages  and  hay  and  things  do  not  grow  in 
the  Academy  of  Music;  but  no  doubt  it  is  on  account 
of  the  interruption  of  the  light  by  the  benches,  and 
the  impossibility  of  hoeing  the  crop  except  in  the 
aisles.  The  fact  that  the  ushers  grow  their  button- 
hole bouquets  on  the  premises  shows  what  might  be 
done  if  they  had  the  right  kind  of  an  agricultural 
head  to  the  establishment. 
355 


MARK     TWAIN 

We  visited  also  the  venerable  Cathedral,  and  the 
pretty  square  in  front  of  it;  the  one  dim  with  re- 
ligious light,  the  other  brilliant  with  the  worldly 
sort,  and  lovely  with  orange  trees  and  blossomy 
shrubs;  then  we  drove  in  the  hot  sun  through  the 
wilderness  of  houses  and  out  onto  the  wide,  dead 
level  beyond,  where  the  villas  are,  and  the  water- 
wheels  to  drain  the  town,  and  the  commons  populous 
with  cows  and  children;  passing  by  an  old  cemetery 
where  we  were  told  lie  the  ashes  of  an  early  pirate; 
but  we  took  him  on  trust,  and  did  not  visit  him. 
He  was  a  pirate  with  a  tremendous  and  sanguinary 
history;  and  as  long  as  he  preserved  unspotted,  in 
retirement,  the  dignity  of  his  name  and  the  grandeur 
of  his  ancient  calling,  homage  and  reverence  were 
his  from  high  and  low;  but  when  at  last  he  descended 
into  politics  and  became  a  paltry  alderman,  the 
public  "shook"  him,  and  turned  aside  and  wept. 
When  he  died,  they  set  up  a  monument  over  him; 
and  little  by  little  he  has  come  into  respect  again; 
but  it  is  respect  for  the  pirate,  not  the  alderman. 
To-day  the  loyal  and  generous  remember  only  what 
he  was,  and  charitably  forget  what  he  became. 

Thence,  we  drove  a  few  miles  across  a  swamp, 
along  a  raised  shell  road,  with  a  canal  on  one  hand 
and  a  dense  wood  on  the  other;  and  here  and  there, 
in  the  distance,  a  ragged  and  angular-limbed  and 
moss-bearded  cypress-top  standing  out,  clear-cut 
against  the  sky,  and  as  quaint  of  form  as  the  apple 
trees  in  Japanese  pictures — such  was  our  course  and 
the  surroundings  of  it.  There  was  an  occasional 
alligator  swimming  comfortably  along  in  the  canal, 
356 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

and  an  occasional  picturesque  colored  person  on  the 
bank,  flinging  his  statue-rigid  reflection  upon  the  still 
water  and  watching  for  a  bite. 

And  by  and  by  we  reached  the  West  End,  a  col- 
lection of  hotels  of  the  usual  light  summer-resort 
pattern,  with  broad  verandas  all  around,  and  the 
waves  of  the  wide  and  blue  Lake  Pontchartrain  lap- 
ping the  thresholds.  We  had  dinner  on  a  ground 
veranda  over  the  water — the  chief  dish  the  renowned 
fish  called  pompano,  delicious  as  the  less  criminal 
forms  of  sin. 

Thousands  of  people  come  by  rail  and  carriage  to 
West  End  and  to  Spanish  Fort  every  evening,  and 
dine,  listen  to  the  bands,  take  strolls  in  the  open 
air  under  the  electric  lights,  go  sailing  on  the  lake, 
and  entertain  themselves  in  various  and  sundry  other 
ways. 

We  had  opportunities  on  other  days  and  in  other 
places  to  test  the  pompano.  Notably,  at  an  edi- 
torial dinner  at  one  of  the  clubs  in  the  city.  He  was 
in  his  last  possible  perfection  there,  and  justified  his 
fame.  In  his  suite  was  a  tall  pyramid  of  scarlet 
crayfish — large  ones;  as  large  as  one's  thumb;  deli- 
cate, palatable,  appetizing.  Also  deviled  whitebait; 
also  shrimps  -of  choice  quality ;  and  a  platter  of  small 
soft-shell  crabs  of  a  most  superior  breed.  The  other 
dishes  were  what  one  might  get  at  Delmonico's  or 
Buckingham  Palace ;  those  I  have  spoken  of  can  be  had 
in.  similar  perfection  in  New  Orleans  only,  I  suppose. 

In  the  West  and  South  they  have  a  new  institution 
— the  Broom  Brigade.  It  is  composed  of  young 
ladies  who  dress  in  a  uniform  costume,  and  go 
357 


MARK     TWAIN 

through  the  infantry  drill,  with  broom  in  place  of 
musket.  It  is  a  very  pretty  sight,  on  private  view. 
When  they  perform  on  the  stage  of  a  theater,  in  the 
blaze  of  colored  fires,  it  must  be  a  fine  and  fasci- 
nating spectacle.  I  saw  them  go  through  their  com- 
plex manual  with  grace,  spirit,  and  admirable  pre- 
cision. I  saw  them  do  everything  which  a  human 
being  can  possibly  do  with  a  broom,  except  sweep. 
I  did  not  see  them  sweep.  But  I  know  they  could 
learn.  What  they  have  already  learned  proves  that. 
And  if  they  ever  should  learn,  and  should  go  on  the 
war-path  down  Tchoupitoulas  or  some  of  those  other 
streets  around  there,  those  thoroughfares  would  bear 
a  greatly  improved  aspect  in  a  very  few  minutes. 
But  the  girls  themselves  wouldn't ;  so  nothing  would 
be  really  gained,  after  all. 

The  drill  was  in  the  Washington  Artillery  building. 
In  this  building  we  saw  many  interesting  relics  of 
the  war.  Also  a  fine  oil-painting  representing  Stone- 
wall Jackson's  last  interview  with  General  Lee.  Both 
men  are  on  horseback.  Jackson  has  just  ridden 
up,  and  is  accosting  Lee.  The  picture  is  very  valu- 
able, on  account  of  the  portraits,  which  are  authentic. 
But  like  many  another  historical  picture,  it  means 
nothing  without  its  label.  And  one  label  will  fit 
it  as  well  as  another : 

First  Interview  between  Lee  and  Jackson. 

Last  Interview  between  Lee  and  Jackson. 

Jackson  Introducing  Himself  to  Lee. 

Jackson  Accepting  Lee's  Invitation  to  Dinner. 

Jackson  Declining  Lee's  Invitation  to  Dinner — 
with  Thanks. 

358 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

Jackson  Apologizing  for  a  Heavy  Defeat. 

Jackson  Reporting  a  Great  Victory. 

Jackson  Asking  Lee  for  a  Match. 

It  tells  one  story,  and  a  sufficient  one;  for  it  says 
quite  plainly  and  satisfactorily  >  "Here  are  Lee  and 
Jackson  together."  The  artist  would  have  made  it 
tell  that  this  is  Lee  and  Jackson's  last  interview  if 
he  could  have  done  it.  But  he  couldn't,  for  there 
wasn't  any  way  to  do  it.  A  good  legible  label  is 
usually  worth,  for  information,  a  ton  of  significant 
attitude  and  expression  in  a  historical  picture.  In 
Rome,  people  with  fine  sympathetic  natures  stand 
up  and  weep  in  front  of  the  celebrated  "Beatrice 
Cenci  the  Day  before  Her  Execution."  It  shows 
what  a  label  can  do.  If  they  did  not  know  the  pic- 
ture, they  would  inspect  it  unmoved,  and  say, 
"Young  girl  with  hay  fever;  young  girl  with  her 
head  in  a  bag." 

I  found  the  half-forgotten  Southern  intonations 
and  elisions  as  pleasing  to  my  ear  as  they  had  for- 
merly been.  A  Southerner  talks  music.  At  least  it 
is  music  to  me,  but  then  I  was  born  in  the  South. 
The  educated  Southerner  has  no  use  for  an  r,  except 
at  the  beginning  of  a  word.  He  says  "honah,"  and 
"dinnah,"  and  "Gove'nuh,"  and  "befo'  the  waw," 
and  so  on.  The  words  may  lack  charm  to  the  eye, 
in  print,  but  they  have  it  to  the  ear.  When  did  the 
r  disappear  from  Southern  speech,  and  how  did  it 
come  to  disappear?  The  custom  of  dropping  it  was 
not  borrowed  from  the  North,  nor  inherited  from 
England.  Many  Southerners — most  Southerners — 
put  a  y  into  occasional  words  that  begin  with  the  k 
359 


MARK     TWAIN 

sound.  For  instance,  they  say  Mr.  K'yahtah 
(Carter)  and  speak  of  playing  k'yahds  or  of  riding 
in  the  k'yahs.  And  they  have  the  pleasant  custom 
— long  ago  fallen  into  decay  in  the  North — of  fre- 
quently employing  the  respectful  "Sir."  Instead  of 
the  curt  Yes,  and  the  abrupt  No,  they  say  "Yes, 
suh";  "No,  suh." 

But  there  are  some  infelicities,  such  as  "like"  for 
"as,"  and  the  addition  of  an  "at"  where  it  isn't 
needed.  I  heard  an  educated  gentleman  say,  ' '  Like 
the  flag-officer  did."  His  cook  or  his  butler  would 
have  said,  "Like  the  flag-officer  done."  You  hear 
gentlemen  say,  "Where  have  you  been  at?"  And 
here  is  the  aggravated  form — heard  a  ragged  street 
Arab  say  it  to  a  comrade:  "I  was  a-ask'n'  Tom  whah 
you  was  a-sett'n'  at."  The  very  elect  carelessly  say 
"will"  when  they  mean  "shall";  and  many  of  them 
say  "I  didn't  go  to  do  it,"  meaning  "I  didn't  mean 
to  do  it."  The  Northern  word  "guess" — imported 
from  England,  where  it  used  to  be  common,  and  now 
regarded  by  satirical  Englishmen  as  a  Yankee  origi- 
nal— is  but  little  used  among  Southerners.  They  say 
"reckon."  They  haven't  any  "doesn't"  in  their 
language;  they  say  "don't"  instead.  The  unpol- 
ished often  use  "went"  for  "gone."  It  is  nearly  as 
bad  as  the  Northern  "hadn't  ought."  This  reminds 
me  that  a  remark  of  a  very  peculiar  nature  was  made 
here  in  my  neighborhood  (in  the  North)  a  few  days 
ago :  "  He  hadn't  ought  to  have  went."  How  is  that  ? 
Isn't  that  a  good  deal  of  a  triumph?  One  knows  the 
orders  combined  in  this  half-breed's  architecture 
without  inquiring:  one  parent  Northern,  the  other 
360 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

Southern.  To-day  I  heard  a  schoolmistress  ask, 
' '  Where  is  John  gone  ?"  This  form  is  so  common — so 
nearly  universal,  in  fact — that  if  she  had  used 
"whither"  instead  of  "where,"  I  think  it  would  have 
sounded  like  an  affectation. 

We  picked  up  one  excellent  word — a  word  worth 
traveling  to  New  Orleans  to  get;  a  nice  limber,  ex- 
pressive, handy  word — "Lagniappe."  They  pro- 
nounce it  larmy-yap.  It  is  Spanish — so  they  said. 
We  discovered  it  at  the  head  of  a  column  of  odds 
and  ends  in  the  Picayune  the  first  day;  heard  twenty 
people  use  it  the  second;  inquired  what  it  meant  the 
third;  adopted  it  and  got  facility  in  swinging  it  the 
fourth.  It  has  a  restricted  meaning,  but  I  think  the 
people  spread  it  out  a  little  when  they  choose.  It 
is  the  equivalent  of  the  thirteenth  roll  in  a  "baker's 
dozen."  It  is  something  thrown  in,  gratis,  for  good 
measure.  The  custom  originated  in  the  Spanish 
quarter  of  the  city.  When  a  child  or  a  servant  buys 
something  in  a  shop — or  even  the  mayor  or  the 
governor,  for  aught  I  know — he  finishes  the  operation 
by  saying : 

"Give  me  something  for  lagniappe." 

The  shopman  always  responds;  gives  the  child  a 
bit  of  licorice-root,  gives  the  servant  a  cheap  cigar 
or  a  spool  of  thread,  gives  the  governor — I  don't 
know  what  he  gives  the  governor;  support,  likely. 

When  you  are  invited  to  drink — and  this  does 
occur  now  and  then  in  New  Orleans — and  you  say, 
"What,  again? — no,  I've  had  enough,"  the  other 
party  says,  "But  just  this  one  time  more — this  is  for 
lagniappe."  When  the  beau  perceives  that  he  is 
361 


MARK     TWAIN 

stacking  his  compliments  a  trifle  too  high,  and  sees 
by  the  young  lady's  countenance  that  the  edifice 
would  have  been  better  with  the  top  compliment 
left  off,  he  puts  his  "I  beg  pardon,  no  harm  intended," 
into  the  briefer  form  of  "Oh,  that's  for  lagniappe." 
If  the  waiter  in  the  restaurant  stumbles  and  spills 
a  gill  of  coffee  down  the  back  of  your  neck,  he  says, 
"F'r  lagniappe,  sah,"  and  gets  you  another  cup 
without  extra  charge. 


CHAPTER  XLV 

SOUTHERN    SPORTS 

IN  the  North  one  hears  the  war  mentioned,  in  social 
conversation,  once  a  month;  sometimes  as  often 
as  once  a  week;  but  as  a  distinct  subject  for  talk,  it 
has  long  ago  been  relieved  of  duty.  There  are  suffi- 
cient reasons  for  this.  Given  a  dinner  company  of 
six  gentlemen  to-day,  it  can  easily  happen  that  four 
of  them — and  possibly  five — were  not  in  the  field  at 
all.  So  the  chances  are  four  to  two,  or  five  to  one, 
that  the  war  will  at  no  time  during  the  evening 
become  the  topic  of  conversation;  and  the  chances 
are  still  greater  that  if  it  become  the  topic  it  will 
remain  so  but  a  little  while.  If  you  add  six  ladies 
to  the  company,  you  have  added  six  people  who  saw 
so  little  of  the  dread  realities  of  the  war  that  they 
ran  out  of  talk  concerning  them  years  ago,  and  now 
would  soon  weary  of  the  war  topic  if  you  brought 
it  up. 

The  case  is  very  different  in  the  South.  There, 
every  man  you  meet  was  in  the  war ;  and  every  lady 
you  meet  saw  the  war.  The  war  is  the  great  chief 
topic  of  conversation.  The  interest  in  it  is  vivid 
and  constant ;  the  interest  in  other  topics  is  fleeting. 
Mention  of  the  war  will  wake  up  a  dull  company 
and  set  their  tongues  going  when  nearly  any  other 
363 


f 


MARK     TWAIN 


topic  would  fail.  In  the  South,  the  war  is  what 
A.  D.  is  elsewhere;  they  date  from  it.  All  day  long 
you  hear  things  "placed"  as  having  happened  since 
the  waw;  or  du'in'  the  waw;  or  befo'  the  waw;  or 
right  aftah  the  waw;  or  'bout  two  yeahs  or  five 
yeahs  or  ten  yeahs  befo'  the  waw  or  aftah  the  waw. 
It  shows  how  intimately  every  individual  was  vis- 
ited, in  his  own  person,  by  that  tremendous  episode. 
It  gives  the  inexperienced  stranger  a  better  idea  of 
what  a  vast  and  comprehensive  calamity  invasion  is 
than  he  can  ever  get  by  reading  books  at  the  fireside. 

At  a  club  one  evening,  a  gentleman  turned  to  me 
and  said,  in  an  aside: 

"You  notice,  of  course,  that  we  are  nearly  always 
talking  about  the  war.  It  isn't  because  we  haven't 
anything  else  to  talk  about,  but  because  nothing  else 
has  so  strong  an  interest  for  us.  And  there  is  an- 
other reason:  In  the  war,  each  of  us,  in  his  own 
person,  seems  to  have  sampled  all  the  different 
varieties  of  human  experience;  as  a  consequence,  you 
can't  mention  an  outside  matter  of  any  sort  but  it 
will  certainly  remind  some  listener  of  something  that 
happened  during  the  war — and  out  he  comes  with 
it.  Of  course  that  brings  the  talk  back  to  the  war. 
You  may  try  all  you  want  to,  to  "keep  other  subjects 
before  the  house,  and  we  may  all  join  in  and  help, 
but  there  can  be  but  one  result:  the  most  random 
topic  would  load  every  man  up  with  war  reminis- 
cences, and  shut  him  up,  too;  and  talk  would  be  likely 
to  stop  presently,  because  you  can't  talk  pale  in- 
consequentialities  when  you've  got  a  crimson  fact  or 
fancy  in  your  head  that  you  are  burning  to  fetch  out." 
364 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

The  poet  was  sitting  some  little  distance  away; 
and  presently  he  began  to  speak — about  the  moon. 

The  gentleman  who  had  been  talking  to  me  re- 
marked in  an  aside:  "There,  the  moon  is  far  enough 
from  the  seat  of  war,  but  you  will  see  that  it  will 
suggest  something  to  somebody  about  the  war;  in 
ten  minutes  from  now  the  moon,  as  a  topic,  will  be 
shelved." 

The  poet  was  saying  he  had  noticed  something 
which  was  a  surprise  to  him;  had  had  the  impression 
that  down  here,  toward  the  equator,  the  moonlight 
was  much  stronger  and  brighter  than  up  North;  had 
had  the  impression  that  when  he  visited  New  Orleans, 
many  years  ago,  the  moon — 

Interruption  from  the  other  end  of  the  room: 

"Let  me  explain  that.  Reminds  me  of  an  anec- 
dote. Everything  is  changed  since  the  war,  for 
better  or  for  worse;  but  you'll  find  people  down  here 
born  grumblers,  who  see  no  change  except  the  change 
for  the  worse.  There  was  an  old  negro  woman  of 
this  sort.  A  young  New-Yorker  said  in  her  presence, 
'What  a  wonderful  moon  you  have  down  here ! '  She 
sighed  and  said,  'Ah,  bless  yo'  heart,  honey,  you 
ought  to  seen  dat  moon  befo*  de  waw!'" 

The  new  topic  was  dead  already.  But  the  poet 
resurrected  it,  and  gave  it  a  new  start. 

A  brief  dispute  followed,  as  to  whether  the  differ- 
ence between  Northern  and  Southern  moonlight 
really  existed  or  was  only  imagined.  Moonlight 
talk  drifted  easily  into  talk  about  artificial  methods 
of  dispelling  darkness.  Then  somebody  remembered 
that  when  Farragut  advanced  upon  Port  Hudson 
365 


MARK     TWAIN 

on  a  dark  night — and  did  not  wish  to  assist  the  aim 
of  the  Confederate  gunners — he  carried  no  battle- 
lanterns,  but  painted  the  decks  of  his  ships  white,  and 
thus  created  a  dim  but  valuable  light,  which  enabled 
his  own  men  to  grope  their  way  around  with  con- 
siderable facility.  At  this  point  the  war  got  the 
floor  again — the  ten  minutes  not  quite  up  yet. 

I  was  not  sorry,  for  war  talk  by  men  who  have 
been  in  a  war  is  always  interesting;  whereas  moon 
talk  by  a  poet  who  has  not  been  in  the  moon  is 
likely  to  be  dull. 

We  went  to  a  cockpit  in  New  Orleans  on  a  Satur- 
day afternoon.  I  had  never  seen  a  cock-fight  before. 
There  were  men  and  boys  there  of  all  ages  and  all 
colors,  and  of  many  languages  and  nationalities.  But 
I  noticed  one  quite  conspicuous  and  surprising  ab- 
sence: the  traditional  brutal  faces.  There  were  no 
brutal  faces.  With  no  cock-fighting  going  on,  you 
could  have  played  the  gathering  on  a  stranger  for 
a  prayer-meeting;  and  after  it  began,  for  a  revival — 
provided  you  blindfolded  your  stranger — for  the 
shouting  was  something  prodigious. 

A  negro  and  a  white  man  were  in  the  ring;  every- 
body else  outside.  The  cocks  were  brought  in  in 
sacks;  and  when  time  was  called,  they  were  taken 
out  by  the  two  bottle-holders,  stroked,  caressed, 
poked  toward  each  other,  and  finally  liberated.  The 
big  black  cock  plunged  instantly  at  the  little  gray 
one  and  struck  him  on  the  head  with  his  spur.  The 
gray  responded  with  spirit.  Then  the  Babel  of 
many-tongued  shoutings  broke  out,  and  ceased  not 
thenceforth.  When  the  cocks  had  been  fighting 
366 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

some  little  time,  I  was  expecting  them  momently 
to  drop  dead,  for  both  were  blind,  red  with  blood, 
and  so  exhausted  that  they  frequently  fell  down. 
Yet  they  would  not  give  up,  neither  would  they  die. 
The  negro  and  the  white  man  would  pick  them  up 
every  few  seconds,  wipe  them  off,  blow  cold  water  on 
them  in  a  fine  spray,  and  take  their  heads  in  their 
mouths  and  hold  them  there  a  moment — to  warm 
back  the  perishing  life  perhaps;  I  do  not  know. 
Then,  being  set  down  again,  the  dying  creatures 
would  totter  gropingly  about,  with  dragging  wings, 
find  each  other,  strike  a  guesswork  blow  or  two, 
and  fall  exhausted  once  more. 

I  did  not  see  the  end  of  the  battle.  I  forced  my- 
self to  endure  it  as  long  as  I  could,  but  it  was  too 
pitiful  a  sight;  so  I  made  frank  confession  to  that 
effect,  and  we  retired.  We  heard  afterward  that  the 
black  cock  died  in  the  ring,  and  fighting  to  the  last. 

Evidently  there  is  abundant  fascination  about  this 
"sport"  for  such  as  have  had  a  degree  of  familiarity 
with  it.  I  never  saw  people  enjoy  anything  more 
than  this  gathering  enjoyed  this  fight.  The  case  was 
the  same  with  old  gray -heads  and  with  boys  of  ten. 
They  lost  themselves  in  frenzies  of  delight.  The 
' '  cocking-main "  is  an  inhuman  sort  of  entertain- 
ment, there  is  no  question  about  that;  still,  it  seems 
a  much  more  respectable  and  far  less  cruel  sport  than 
fox-hunting — for  the  cocks  like  it;  they  experience, 
as  well  as  confer  enjoyment;  which  is  not  the  fox's 
case. 

We  assisted — in  the  French  sense — at  a  mule- 
race,  one  day.  I  believe  I  enjoyed  this  contest  more 
367 


MARK    TWAIN 

than  any  other  mule  there.  I  enjoyed  it  more  than 
I  remember  having  enjoyed  any  other  animal  race 
I  ever  saw.  The  grand-stand  was  well  filled  with 
the  beauty  and  the  chivalry  of  New  Orleans.  That 
phrase  is  not  original  with  me.  It  is  the  Southern 
reporter's.  He  has  used  it  for  two  generations.  He 
uses  it  twenty  times  a  day,  or  twenty  thousand 
imes  a  day,  or  a  million  times  a  day — according  to 
the  exigencies.  He  is  obliged  to  use  it  a  million 
times  a  day,  if  he  have  occasion  to  speak  of  respect- 
able men  and  women  that  often;  for  he  has  no  other 
phrase  for  such  service  except  that  single  one.  He 
never  tires  of  it;  it  always  has  a  fine  sound  to  him. 
There  is  a  kind  of  swell,  medieval  bulliness  and 
tinsel  about  it  that  pleases  his  gaudy,  barbaric  soul. 
If  he  had  been  in  Palestine  in  the  early  times,  we 
should  have  had  no  references  to  "much  people" 
out  of  him.  No,  he  would  have  said  "the  beauty 
and  the  chivalry  of  Galilee"  assembled  to  hear  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount.  It  is  likely  that  the  men 
and  women  of  the  South  are  sick  enough  of  that 
phrase  by  this  time,  and  would  like  a  change,  but 
there  is  no  immediate  prospect  of  their  getting  it. 

The  New  Orleans  editor  has  a  strong,  compact, 
direct,  unflowery  style;  wastes  no  words,  and  does 
not  gush.  Not  so  with  his  average  correspondent. 
In  the  Appendix  I  have  quoted  a  good  letter,  penned 
by  a  trained  hand;  but  the  average  correspondent 
hurls  a  style  which  differs  from  that.  For  instance: 

The  Times-Democrat  sent"  a  relief -steamer  up  one 
of  the  bayous,  last  April.  This  steamer  landed  at  a 
village,  up  there  somewhere,  and  the  captain  invited 
368 


LIFE    ON     THE    MISSISSIPPI 

some  of  the  ladies  of  the  village  to  make  a  short  trip 
with  him.  They  accepted  and  came  aboard,  and 
the  steamboat  shoved  out  up  the  creek.  That  was 
all  there  was  "to  it."  And  that  is  all  that  the  editor 
of  the  Times-Democrat  would  have  got  out  of  it. 
There  was  nothing  in  the  thing  but  statistics,  and 
he  would  have  got  nothing  else  out  of  it.  He  would 
probably  have  even  tabulated  them ;  partly  to  secure 
perfect  clearness  of  statement,  and  partly  to  save 
space.  But  his  special  correspondent  knows  other 
methods  of  handling  statistics.  He  just  throws  off 
all  restraint  and  wallows  in  them: 

On  Saturday,  early  in  the  morning,  the  beauty  of  the  place 
graced  our  cabin,  and  proud  of  her  fair  freight  the  gallant  little 
boat  glided  up  the  bayou. 

Twenty-two  words  to  say  the  ladies  came  aboard 
and  the  boat  shoved  out  up  the  creek,  is  a  clean 
waste  of  ten  good  words,  and  is  also  destructive  of 
compactness  of  statement. 

The  trouble  with  the  Southern  reporter  is — 
Women.  They  unsettle  him ;  they  throw  him  off  his 
balance.  He  is  plain,  and  sensible,  and  satisfactory, 
until  woman  heaves  in  sight.  Then  he  goes  all  to 
pieces ;  his  mind  totters,  becomes  flowery  and  idiotic. 
From  reading  the  above  extract,  you  would  imagine 
that  this  student  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  is  an  appren- 
tice, and  knows  next  to  nothing  about  handling  a 
pen.  On  the  contrary,  he  furnishes  plenty  of  proofs, 
in  his  long  letter,  that  he  knows  well  enough  how  to 
handle  it  when  the  women  are  not  around  to  give 
him  the  artificial-flower  complaint.  For  instance: 
369 


MARK     TWAIN 

At  four  o'clock  ominous  clouds  began  to  gather  in  the  south- 
east, and  presently  from  the  Gulf  there  came  a  blow  which  in- 
creased in  severity  every  moment.  It  was  not  safe  to  leave 
the  landing  then,  and  there  was  a  delay.  The  oaks  shook  off 
long 'tresses  of  their  mossy  beards  to  the  tugging  of  the  wind, 
and  the  bayou  in  its  ambition  put  on  miniature  waves  in  mocking 
of  much  larger  bodies  of  water.  A  lull  permitted  a  start,  and 
homeward  we  steamed,  an  inky  sky  overhead  and  a  heavy  wind 
blowing.  As  darkness  crept  on,  there  were  few  on  board  who 
did  not  wish  themselves  nearer  home. 

There  is  nothing  the  matter  with  that.  It  is  good 
description,  compactly  put.  Yet  there  was  great 
temptation,  there,  to  drop  into  lurid  writing. 

But  let  us  return  to  the  mule.  Since  I  left  him, 
I  have  rummaged  around  and  found  a  full  report  of 
the  race.  In  it  I  find  confirmation  of  the  theory 
which  I  broached  just  now — namely,  that  the  trouble 
with  the  Southern  reporter  is  Women:  Women, 
supplemented  by  Walter  Scott  and  his  knights  and 
beauty  and  chivalry,  and  so  on.  This  is  an  excellent 
report,  as  long  as  the  women  stay  out  of  it.  But 
when  they  intrude,  we  have  this  frantic  result: 

It  will  be  probably  a  long  time  before  the  ladies'  stand  presents 
such  a  sea  of  foamlike  loveliness  as  it  did  yesterday.  The  New 
Orleans  women  are  always  charming,  but  never  so  much  so  as 
at  this  time  of  the  year,  when  in  their  dainty  spring  costumes 
they  bring  with  them  a  breath  of  balmy  freshness  and  an  odor 
of  sanctity  unspeakable.  The  stand  was  so  crowded  with  them 
that,  walking  at  their  feet  and  seeing  no  possibility  of  approach, 
many  a  man  appreciated  as  he  never  did  before  the  Peri's  feeling 
at  the  Gates  of  Paradise,  and  wondered  what  was  the  priceless 
boon  that  would  admit  him  to  their  sacred  presence.  Sparkling 
on  their  white-robed  breasts  or  shoulders  were  the  colors  of  their 
favorite  knights,  and  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  the  doughty 
heroes  appeared  on  unromantic  mules,  it  would  have  been  easy 
to  imagine  one  of  King  Arthur's  gala-days. 
370 


u 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

There  were  thirteen  mules  in  the  first  heat;  all 
sorts  of  mules,  they  were;  all  sorts  of  complexions, 
gaits,  dispositions,  aspects.  Some  were  handsome 
creatures,  some  were  not;  some  were  sleek,  some 
hadn't  had  their  fur  brushed  lately;  some  were  inno- 
cently gay  and  frisky ;  some  were  full  of  malice  and  all 
unrighteousness;  guessing  from  looks,  some  of  them 
thought  the  matter  on  hand  was  war,  some  thought 
it  was  a  lark,  the  rest  took  it  for  a  religious  occa- 
sion. And  each  mule  acted  according  to  his  con- 
victions. The  result  was  an  absence  of  harmony  well 
compensated  by  a  conspicuous  presence  of  variety — 
variety  of  a  picturesque  and  entertaining  sort. 

All  the  riders  were  young  gentlemen  in  fashionable 
society.  If  the  reader  has  been  wondering  why  it  is 
that  the  ladies  of  New  Orleans  attend  so  humble  an 
orgy  as  a  mule-race,  the  thing  is  explained  now.  It 
is  a  fashion  freak;  all  connected  with  it  are  people 
of  fashion. 

It  is  great  fun,  and  cordially  liked.  The  mule- 
race  is  one  of  the  marked  occasions  of  the  year.  It 
has  brought  some  pretty  fast  mules  to  the  front. 
One  of  these  had  to  be  ruled  out,  because  he  was  so 
fast  that  he  turned  the  thing  into  a  one-mule  con- 
test, and  robbed  it  of  one  of  its  best  features — , 
variety.  But  every  now  and  then  somebody  dis- 
guises him  with  a  new  name  and  a  new  complexion, 
and  rings  him  in  again. 

The  riders  dress  in  full  jockey  costumes  of  bright- 
colored  silks,  satins,  and  velvets. 

The  thirteen  mules  got  away  in  a  body,  after  a 
couple  of  false  starts,  and  scampered  off  with  pro- 


MARK     TWAIN 

digious  spirit.  As  each  mule  and  each  rider  had  a 
distinct  opinion  of  his  own  as  to  how  the  race  ought 
to  be  run,  and  which  side  of  the  track  was  best  in 
certain  circumstances,  and  how  often  the  track  ought 
to  be  crossed,  and  when  a  collision  ought  to  be 
accomplished,  and  when  it  ought  to  be  avoided, 
these  twenty-six  conflicting  opinions  created  a  most 
fantastic  and  picturesque  confusion,  and  the  result- 
ing spectacle  was  killingly  comical. 

Mile  heat ;  time,  2 122.  Eight  of  the  thirteen  mules 
distanced.  I  had  a  bet  on  a  mule  which  would  have 
won  if  the  procession  had  been  reversed.  The 
second  heat  was  good  fun;  and  so  was  the  "consola- 
tion race  for  beaten  mules,"  which  followed  later; 
but  the  first  heat  was  the  best  in  that  respect. 

I  think  that  much  the  most  enjoyable  of  all  races 
is  a  steamboat  race;  but,  next  to  that,  I  prefer  the 
gay  and  joyous  mule-rush.  Two  red-hot  steamboats 
raging  along,  neck-and-neck,  straining  every  nerve — 
that  is  to  say,  every  rivet  in.  the  boilers — quaking  and 
shaking  and  groaning  from  stem  to  stern,  spouting 
white  steam  from  the  pipes,  pouring  black  smoke 
from  the  chimneys,  raining  down  sparks,  parting  the 
river  into  long  breaks  of  hissing  foam — this  is  sport 
that  makes  a  body's  very  liver  curl  with  enjoyment. 
A  horse-race  is  pretty  tame  and  colorless  in  com- 
parison. Still,  a  horse-race  might  be  well  enough, 
in  its  way,  perhaps,  if  it  were  not  for  the  tiresome 
false  starts.  But  then,  nobody  is  ever  killed.  At 
least,  nobody  was  ever  killed  when  I  was  at  a  horse- 
race. They  have  been  crippled,  it  is  true;  but  this 
is  little  to  the  purpose. 

372 


CHAPTER  XLVI 

ENCHANTMENTS  AND  ENCHANTERS 

"  I  "HE  largest  annual  event  in  New  Orleans  is  a 
1  something  which  we  arrived  too  late  to  sample — 
the  Mar&-Gras  festivities.  I  saw  the  procession  of 
the  Mystic  Crew  of  Comus  there,  twenty-four  years 
ago — with  knights  and  nobles  and  so  on,  clothed  in 
silken  and  golden  Paris-made  gorgeousnesses,  planned 
and  bought  for  that  single  night's  use;  and  in  their 
train  all  manner  of  giants,  dwarfs,  monstrosities,  and 
other  diverting  grotesquerie — a  startling  and  won- 
derful sort  of  show,  as  it  filed  solemnly  and  silently 
down  the  street  in  the  light  of  its  smoking  and  flick- 
ering torches;  but  it  is  said  that  in  these  latter  days 
the  spectacle  is  mightily  augmented,  as  to  cost, 
splendor,  and  variety.  There  is  a  chief  personage — 
"Rex";  and  if  I  remember  rightly,  neither  this  king 
nor  any  of  his  great  following  of  subordinates  is 
known  to  any  outsider.  All  these  people  are  gentle- 
men of  position  and  consequence;  and  it  is  a  proud 
thing  to  belong  to  the  organization;  so  the  mystery 
in  which  they  hide  their  personality  is  merely  for 
romance's  sake,  and  not  on  account  of  the  police. 

Mardi-Gras  is  of  course  a  relic  of  the  French  and 
Spanish  occupation;  but  I  judge  that  the  religious 
feature  has  been  pretty  well  knocked  out  of  it  now. 
373 


MARK    TWAIN 

Sir  Walter  has  got  the  advantage  of  the  gentlemen  of 
the  cowl  and  rosary,  and  he  will  stay.  His  medieval 
business,  supplemented  by  the  monsters  and  the 
oddities,  and  the  pleasant  creatures  from  fairy -land,  is 
finer  to  look  at  than  the  poor  fantastic  inventions  and 
performances  of  the  reveling  rabble  of  the  priest's 
day,  and  serves  quite  as  well,  perhaps,  to  emphasize 
the  day  and  admonish  men  that  the  grace-line  be- 
tween the  worldly  season  and  the  holy  one  is 
reached. 

This  Mardi-Gras  pageant  was  the  exclusive  posses- 
sion of  New  Orleans  until  recently.  But  now  it  has 
spread  to  Memphis  and  St.  Louis  and  Baltimore. 
It  has  probably  reached  its  limit.  It  is  a  thing 
which  could  hardly  exist  in  the  practical  North; 
would  certainly  last  but  a  very  brief  time;  as  brief 
a  time  as  it  would  last  in  London.  For  the  soul  of 
it  is  the  romantic,  not  the  funny  and  the  grotesque. 
Take  away  the  romantic  mysteries,  the  kings  and 
knights  and  big-sounding  titles,  and  Mardi-Gras 
would  die,  down  there  in  the  South.  The  very 
feature  that  keeps  it  alive  in  the  South — girly-girly 
romance — would  kill  it  in  the  North  or  in  London. 
Puck  and  Punch,  and  the  press  universal,  would  fall 
upon  it  and  make  merciless  fun  of  it,  and  its  first 
exhibition  would  be  also  its  last. 

Against  the  crimes  of  the  French  Revolution  and 
of  Bonaparte  may  be  set  two  compensating  bene- 
factions: the  Revolution  broke  the  chains  of  the 
ancien  regime  and  of  the  Church,  and  made  a  nation 
of  abject  slaves  a  nation  of  freemen;  and  Bonaparte 
instituted  the  setting  of  merit  above  birth,  and  also 
374 


LIFE    ON    THE    MISSISSIPPI 

so  completely  stripped  the  divinity  from  royalty 
that,  whereas  crowned  heads  in  Europe  were  gods  be- 
fore, they  are  only  men  since,  and  can  never  be  gods 
again,  but  only  figure-heads,  and  answerable  for  their 
acts  like  common  clay.  Such  benefactions  as  these 
compensate  the  temporary  harm  which  Bonaparte 
and  the  Revolution  did,  and  leave  the  world  in  debt 
to  them  for  these  great  and  permanent  services  to 
liberty,  humanity,  and  progress. 

Then  comes  Sir  Walter  Scott  with  his  enchant- 
ments, and  by  his  single  might  checks  this  wave  of 
progress,  and  even  turns  it  back;  sets  the  world  in 
love  with  dreams  and  phantoms;  with  decayed  and 
swinish  forms  of  religion;  with  decayed  and  degraded 
systems  of  government;  with  the  sillinesses  and 
emptinesses,  sham  grandeurs,  sham  gauds,  and  sham 
chivalries  of  a  brainless  and  worthless  long-vanished 
society.  He  did  measureless  harm;  more  real  and 
lasting  harm,  perhaps,  than  any  other  individual  that 
ever  wrote.  Most,  of  the  world  has  now  outlived 
good  part  of  these  harms,  though  by  no  means  all 
of  them;  but  in  our  South  they  flourish  pretty  force- 
fully still.  Not  so  forcefully  as  half  a  generation  ago, 
perhaps,  but  still  forcefully.  There,  the  genuine  and 
wholesome  civilization  of  the  nineteenth  century  is 
curiously  confused  and  commingled  with  the  Walter 
Scott  Middle- Age  sham  civilization,  and  so  you  have 
practical  common  sense,  progressive  ideas,  and  pro- 
gressive works,  mixed  up  with  the  duel,  the  inflated 
speech,  and  the  jejune  romanticism  of  an  absurd  past 
that  is  dead,  and  out  of  charity  ought  to  be  buried. 
But  for  the  Sir  Walter  disease,  the  character  of  the 
375 


MARK     TWAIN 

Southerner — or  Southron,  according  to  Sir  Walter's 
starchier  way  of  phrasing  it — would  be  wholly  mod- 
ern, in  place  of  modern  and  medieval  mixed,  and  the 
South  would  be  fully  a  generation  further  advanced 
than  it  is.  It  was  Sir  Walter  that  made  every  gentle- 
man in  the  South  a  major  or  a  colonel,  or  a  general 
or  a  judge,  before  the  war;  and  it  was  he,  also,  that 
made  these  gentlemen  value  these  bogus  decorations. 
For  it  was  he  that  created  rank  and  caste  down  there, 
and  also  reverence  for  rank  and  caste,  and  pride  and 
pleasure  in  them.  Enough  is  laid  on  slavery,  with- 
out fathering  upon  it  these  creations  and  contribu- 
tions of  Sir  Walter. 

Sir  Walter  had  so  large  a  hand  in  making  Southern 
character,  as  it  existed  before  the  war,  that  he  is  in 
v  great  measure  responsible  for  the  war.  It  seems  a 
V  little  harsh  toward  a  dead  man  to  say  that  we  never 
should  have  had  any  war  but  for  Sir  Walter;  and  yet 
something  of  a  plausible  argument  might,  perhaps, 
be  made  in  support  of  that  wild  proposition.  The 
Southerner  of  the  American  Revolution  owned 
slaves;  so  did  the  Southerner  of  the  Civil  War;  but 
the  former  resembles  the  latter  as  an  Englishman 
resembles  a  Frenchman.  The  change  of  character 
can  be  traced  rather  more  easily  to  Sir  Walter's 
influence  than  to  that  of  any  other  thing  or  per- 
son. 

One  may  observe,  by  one  or  two  signs,  how  deeply 
that  influence  penetrated,  and  how  strongly  it  holds. 
If  one  take  up  a  Northern  or  Southern  literary  peri- 
odical of  forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  he  will  find  it  filled 
with  wordy,  windy,  flowery  "eloquence,"  roman- 
376 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

ticism,  sentimentality — all  imitated  from  Sir  Walter, 
and  sufficiently  badly  done,  too — innocent  travesties 
of  his  style  and  methods,  in  fact.  This  sort  of  litera- 
ture being  the  fashion  in  both  sections  of  the  country, 
there  was  opportunity  for  the  fairest  competition; 
and  as  a  consequence,  the  South  was  able  to  show  as 
many  well-known  literary  names,  proportioned  to 
population,  as  the  North  could. 

But  a  change  has  come,  and  there  is  no  opportu- 
nity now  for  a  fair  competition  between  North  and 
South.  For  the  North  has  thrown  out  that  old  in- 
flated style,  whereas  the  Southern  writer  still  clings 
to  it — clings  to  it  and  has  a  restricted  market  for  his 
wares,  as  a  consequence.  There  is  as  much  literary 
talent  in  the  South,  now,  as  ever  there  was,  of  course; 
but  its  work  can  gain  but  slight  currency  under 
present  conditions;  the  authors  write  for  the  past, 
not  the  present;  they  use  obsolete  forms  and  a  dead 
language.  But  when  a  Southerner  of  genius  writes 
modern  English,  his  book  goes  upon  crutches  no 
longer,  but  upon  wings ;  and  they  carry  it  swiftly  all 
about  America  and  England,  and  through  the  great 
English  reprint  publishing-houses  of  Germany — as 
witness  the  experience  of  Mr.  Cable  and  "Uncle 
Remus,"  two  of  the  very  few  Southern  authors  who 
do  not  write  in  the  Southern  style.  Instead  of  three 
or  four  widely  known  literary  names,  the  South 
ought  to  have  a  dozen  or  two — and  will  have  them 
when  Sir  Walter's  time  is  out. 

A  curious  exemplification  of  the  power  of  a  single 
book  for  good  or  harm  is  shown  in  the  effects  wrought 
by  Don  Quixote  and  those  wrought  by  Ivanhoe.  The 
377 


MARK    TWAIN 

first  swept  the  world's  admiration  for  the  medieval 
chivalry  silliness  out  of  existence ;  and  the  other  re- 
stored it.  As  far  as  our  South  is  concerned,  the 
good  work  done  by  Cervantes  is  pretty  nearly  a 
dead  letter,  so  effectually  has  Scott's  pernicious 
work  undermined  it. 


CHAPTER  XLVII 

"UNCLE  REMUS"  AND  MR.  CABLE 

MR.  JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS  ("Uncle  Re- 
mus") was  to  arrive  from  Atlanta  at  seven 
o'clock  Sunday  morning;  so  we  got  up  and  received 
him.  We  were  able  to  detect  him  among  the  crowd 
of  arrivals  at  the  hotel  counter  by  his  correspondence 
with  a  description  of  him  which  had  been  furnished 
us  from  a  trustworthy  source.  He  was  said  to  be 
undersized,  red-haired,  and  somewhat  freckled.  He 
was  the  only  man  in  the  party  whose  outside  tallied 
with  this  bill  of  particulars.  He  was  said  to  be  very 
shy.  He  is  a  shy  man.  Of  this  there  is  no  doubt. 
It  may  not  show  on  the  surface,  but  the  shyness  is 
there.  After  days  of  intimacy  one  wonders  to  see 
that  it  is  still  in  about  as  strong  force  as  ever. 
There  is  a  fine  and  beautiful  nature  hidden  behind 
it,  as  all  know  who  have  read  the  "Uncle  Remus" 
book;  and  a  fine  genius,  too,  as  all  know  by  the  same 
sign.  I  seem  to  be  talking  quite  freely  about  this 
neighbor;  but  in  talking  to  the  public  I  am  but 
talking  to  his  personal  friends,  and  these  things  are 
permissible  among  friends. 

He  deeply  disappointed  a  number  of  children  who 
had  flocked  eagerly  to  Mr.  Cable's  house  to  get  a 
379 


MARK     TWAIN 

glimpse  of  the  illustrious  sage  and  oracle  of  the 
nation's  nurseries.  They  said: 

"Why,  he's  white!" 

They  were  grieved  about  it.  So,  to  console  them, 
the  book  was  brought,  that  they  might  hear  Uncle 
Remus's  Tar-Baby  story  from  the  lips  of  Uncle 
Remus  himself — or  what,  in  their  outraged  eyes,  was 
left  of  him.  But  it  turned  out  that  he  had  never 
read  aloud  to  people,  and  was  too  shy  to  venture  the 
attempt  now.  Mr.  Cable  and  I  read  from  books  of 
ours,  to  show  him  what  an  easy  trick  it  was ;  but  his 
immortal  shyness  was  proof  against  even  this  saga- 
cious strategy;  so  we  had  to  read  about  Brer  Rabbit 
ourselves. 

Mr.  Harris  ought  to  be  able  to  read  the  negro 
dialect  better  than  anybody  else,  for  in  the  matter 
of  writing  it  he  is  the  only  master  the  country  has 
produced.  Mr.  Cable  is  the  only  master  in  the 
writing  of  French  dialects  that  the  country  has  pro- 
duced; and  he  reads  them  in  perfection.  It  was  a 
great  treat  to  hear  him  read  about  Jean-ah  Poquelin, 
and  about  Innerarity  and  his  famous  "pigshoo" 
representing  "Louisihanna  Rif-i using  to  Hanter  the 
Union,"  along  with  passages  of  nicely  shaded  German 
dialect  from  a  novel  which  was  still  in  manuscript. 

It  came  out  in  conversation  that  in  two  different 
instances  Mr.  Cable  got  into  grotesque  trouble  by 
using,  in  his  books,  next-to-impossible  French  names 
which  nevertheless  happened  to  be  borne  by  living 
and  sensitive  citizens  of  New  Orleans.  His  names 
were  either  inventions  or  were  borrowed  from  the 
ancient  and  obsolete  past,  I  do  not  now  remember 
380 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

which ;  but  at  any  rate  living  bearers  of  them  turned 
up,  and  were  a  good  deal  hurt  at  having  attention 
directed  to  themselves  and  their  affairs  in  so  ex- 
cessively public  a  manner. 

Mr.  Warner  and  I  had  an  experience  of  the  same 
sort  when  we  wrote  the  book  called  The  Gilded  Age. 
There  is  a  character  in  it  called  "Sellers."  I  do 
not  remember  what  his  first  name  was,  in  the  be- 
ginning; but  anyway,  Mr.  Warner  did  not  like  itr 
and  wanted  it  improved.  He  asked  me  if  I  was  able 
to  imagine  a  person  named  "Eschol  Sellers."  Of 
course  I  said  I  could  not,  without  stimulants.  He  said 
that  away  out  West,  once,  he  had  met,  and  contem- 
plated, and  actually  shaken  hands  with  a  man  bearing 
that  impossible  name — "Eschol  Sellers."  He  added: 

"It  was  twenty  years  ago;  his  name  has  probably 
carried  him  off  before  this;  and  if  it  hasn't,  he  will 
never  see  the  book  anyhow.  We  will  confiscate  his 
name.  The  name  you  are  using  is  common,  and  there- 
fore dangerous;  there  are  probably  a  thousand  Sel- 
lerses  bearing  it,  and  the  whole  horde  will  come  after 
us;  but  Eschol  Sellers  is  a  safe  name — it  is  a  rock." 

So  we  borrowed  that  name;  and  when  the  book 
had  been  out  about  a  week,  one  of  the  stateliest  and 
handsomest  and  most  aristocratic-looking  white  men 
that  ever  lived,  called  around,  with  the  most  formi- 
dable libel  suit  in  his  pocket  that  ever — well,  in  brief, 
we  got  his  permission  to  suppress  an  edition  of  ten 
million1  copies  of  the  book  and  change  that  name  to 
"Beriah  Sellers"  in  future  editions. 

1  Figures  taken  from  memory,  and  probably  incorrect.  Think  it 
was  more. 


s      CHAPTER  XLVIII 

SUGAR   AND   POSTAGE 

ONE  day,  on  the  street,  I  encountered  the  man 
whom,  of  all  men,  I  most  wished  to  see — 
Horace  Bixby;  formerly  pilot  under  me — or  rather, 
over  me — now  captain  of  the  great  steamer  City  of 
Baton  Rouge,  the  latest  and  swiftest  addition  to  the 
Anchor  Line.  The  same  slender  figure,  the  same 
tight  curls,  the  same  spring  step,  the  same  alertness, 
the  same  decision  of  eye  and  answering  decision  of 
hand,  the  same  erect  military  bearing;  not  an  inch 
gained  or  lost  in  girth,  not  an  ounce  gained  or  lost 
in  weight,  not  a  hair  turned.  It  is  a  curious  thing, 
to  leave  a  man  thirty-five  years  old,  and  come  back 
at  the  end  of  twenty-one  years  and  find  him  still 
only  thirty-five.  I  have  not  had  an  experience  of 
this  kind  before,  I  believe.  There  were  some  crow's- 
feet,  but  they  counted  for  next  to  nothing,  since 
they  were  inconspicuous. 

His  boat  was  just  in.  I  had  been  waiting  several 
days  for  her,  purposing  to  return  to  St.  Louis  in  her. 
The  captain  and  I  joined  a  party  of  ladies  and 
gentlemen,  guests  of  Major  Wood,  and  went  down 
the  river  fifty-four  miles,  in  a  swift  tug,  to  ex- 
Governor  Warmoth's  sugar-plantation.  Strung  along 
below  the  city  was  a  number  of  decayed,  ram- 
382 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

shackly,  superannuated  old  steamboats,  not  one  of 
which  had  I  ever  seen  before.  They  had  all  been 
built,  and  worn  out,  and  thrown  aside,  since  I  was 
here  last.  This  gives  one  a  realizing  sense  of  the 
frailness  of  a  Mississippi  boat  and  the  briefness  of 
its  life. 

Six  miles  below  town  a  fat  and  battered  brick 
chimney,  sticking  above  the  magnolias  and  live-oaks, 
was  pointed  out  as  the  monument  erected  by  an 
appreciative  nation  to  celebrate  the  battle  of  New 
Orleans — Jackson's  victory  over  the  British,  Jan- 
uary 8,  1815.  The  war  had  ended,  the  two  nations 
were  at  peace,  but  the  news  had  not  yet  reached 
New  Orleans.  If  we  had  had  the  cable  telegraph 
in  those  days,  this  blood  would  not  have  been  spilt, 
those  lives  would  not  have  been  wasted;  and  better 
still,  Jackson  would  probably  never  have  been  Presi- 
dent. We  have  gotten  over  the  harms  done  us  by 
the  War  of  1812,  but  not  over  some  of  those  done  us 
by  Jackson's  presidency. 

The  Warmoth  plantation  covers  a  vast  deal  of 
ground,  and  the  hospitality  of  the  Warmoth  mansion 
is  graduated  to  the  same  large  scale.  We  saw  steam- 
plows  at  work,  here,  for  the  first  time.  The  traction 
engine  travels  about  on  its  own  wheels,  till  it  reaches 
the  required  spot;  then  it  stands  still  and  by  means 
of  a  wire  rope  pulls  the  huge  plow  toward  itself 
two  or  three  hundred  yards  across  the  field,  between 
the  rows  of  cane.  The  thing  cuts  down  into  the 
black  mold  a  foot  and  a  half  deep.  The  plow  looks 
like  a  fore-and-aft  brace  of  a  Hudson  River  steamer, 
inverted.  When  the  negro  steersman  sits  on  one 
383 


MARK     TWAIN 

end  of  it,  that  end  tilts  down  near  the  ground,  while 
the  other  sticks  up  high  in  air.  This  great  seesaw 
goes  rolling  and  pitching  like  a  ship  at  sea,  and  it  is 
not  every  circus-rider  that  could  stay  on  it. 

The  plantation  contains  two  thousand  six  hun- 
dred acres;  six  hundred  and  fifty  are  in  cane;  and 
there  is  a  fruitful  orange  grove  of  five  thousand 
trees.  The  cane  is  cultivated  after  a  modern  and 
intricate  scientific  fashion,  too  elaborate  and  com- 
plex for  me  to  attempt  to  describe;  but  it  lost  forty 
thousand  dollars  last  year.  I  forget  the  other  de- 
tails. However,  this  year's  crop  will  reach  ten  or 
twelve  hundred  tons  of  sugar,  consequently  last 
year's  loss  will  not  matter.  These  troublesome  and 
expensive  scientific  methods  achieve  a  yield  of  a 
ton  and  a  half,  and  from  that  to  two  tons,  to  the 
acre;  which  is  three  or  four  times  what  the  yield  of 
an  acre  was  in  my  time. 

The  drainage  ditches  were  everywhere  alive  with 
little  crabs — "fiddlers."  One  saw  them  scampering 
sidewise  in  every  direction  whenever  they  heard  a 
disturbing  noise.  Expensive  pests,  these  crabs;  for 
they  bore  into  the  levees,  and  ruin  them. 

The  great  sugar-house  was  a  wilderness  of  tubs 
and  tanks  and  vats  and  filters,  pumps,  pipes,  and 
machinery.  The  process  of  making  sugar  is  exceed- 
ingly interesting.  First,  you  heave  your  cane  into 
the  centrifugals  and  grind  out  the  juice;  then  run  it 
through  the  evaporating -pan  to  extract  the  fiber; 
then  through  the  bone-filter  to  remove  the  alcohol; 
then  through  the  clarifying-tanks  to  discharge  the 
molasses;  then  through  the  granulating-pipe  to  con- 
384 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

dense  it;  then  through  the  vacuum -pan  to  extract 
the  vacuum.  It  is  now  ready  for  market.  I  have 
jotted  these  particulars  down  from  memory.  The 
thing  looks  simple  and  easy.  Do  not  deceive  your- 
self. To  make  sugar  is  really  one  of  the  most  diffi- 
cult things  in  the  world.  And  to  make  it  right  is 
next  to  impossible.  If  you  will  examine  your  own 
supply  every  now  and  then  for  a  term  of  years,  and 
tabulate  the  result,  you  will  find  that  not  two  men  in 
twenty  can  make  sugar  without  getting  sand  into  it. 

We  could  have  gone  down  to  the  mouth  of  the 
river  and  visited  Captain  Eads's  great  work,  the 
"jetties,"  where  the  river  has  been  compressed 
between  walls,  and  thus  deepened  to  twenty-six  feet; 
but  it  was  voted  useless  to  go,  since  at  this  stage  of 
the  water  everything  would  be  covered  up  and 
invisible. 

We  could  have  visited  that  ancient  and  singular 
burg,  "Pilot-town,"  which  stands  on  stilts  in  the 
water — so  they  say.;  where  nearly  all  communication 
is  by  skiff  and  canoe,  even  to  the  attending  of  wed- 
dings and  funerals;  and  where  the  littlest  boys  and 
girls  are  as  handy  with  the  oar  as  unamphibious 
children  are  with  the  velocipede. 

We  could  have  done  a  number  of  other  things;  but 
on  account  of  limited  time,  we  went  back  home. 
The  sail  up  the  breezy  and  sparkling  river  was  a 
charming  experience,  and  would  have  been  satisfy- 
ingly  sentimental  and  romantic  but  for  the  interrup- 
tions of  the  tug's  pet  parrot,  whose  tireless  comments 
upon  the  scenery  and  the  guests  were  always  this- 
worldly,  and  often  profane.  He  had  also  a  super- 
385 


MARK     TWAIN 

abundance  of  the  discordant,  ear-splitting,  metallic 
laugh  common  to  his  breed — a  machine-made  laugh, 
a  Frankenstein  laugh,  with  the  soul  left  out  of  it. 
He  applied  it  to  every  sentimental  remark,  and  to 
every  pathetic  song.  He  cackled  it  out  with  hideous 
energy  after  "Home  again,  home  again,  from  a 

foreign  shore,"  and  said  he  "wouldn't  give  a  d 

for  a  tug-load  of  such  rot."  Romance  and  senti- 
ment cannot  long  survive  this  sort  of  discourage- 
ment; so  the  singing  and  talking  presently  ceased; 
which  so  delighted  the  parrot  that  he  cursed  himself 
hoarse  for  joy. 

Then  the  male  members  of  the  party  moved  to 
the  forecastle,  to  smoke  and  gossip.  There  were 
several  old  steamboatmen  along,  and  I  learned  from 
them  a  great  deal  of  what  had  been  happening  to  my 
former  river  friends  during  my  long  absence.  I 
learned  that  a  pilot  whom  I  used  to  steer  for  is 
become  a  spiritualist,  and  for  more  than  fifteen 
years  has  been  receiving  a  letter  every  week  from  a 
deceased  relative,  through  a  New  York  spiritualistic 
medium  named  Manchester — postage  graduated  by 
distance;  from  the  local  post-office  in  Paradise  to 
New  York,  five  dollars ;  from  New  York  to  St.  Louis, 
three  cents.  I  remember  Mr.  Manchester  very  well. 
I  called  on  him  once,  ten  years  ago,  with  a  couple  of 
friends,  one  of  whom  wished  to  inquire  after  a  de- 
ceased uncle.  This  uncle  had  lost  his  life  in  a 
peculiarly  violent  and  unusual  way,  half  a  dozen 
years  before:  a  cyclone  blew  him  some  three  miles 
and  knocked  a  tree  down  with  him  which  was  four 
feet  through  at  the  butt  and  sixty-five  feet  high. 
386 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

He  did  not  survive  this  triumph.  At  the  stance  just 
referred  to,  my  friend  questioned  his  late  uncle, 
through  Mr.  Manchester,  and  the  late  uncle  wrote 
down  his  replies,  using  Mr.  Manchester's  hand  and 
pencil  for  that  purpose.  The  following  is  a  fair 
example  of  the  questions  asked,  and  also  of  the  sloppy 
twaddle  in  the  way  of  answers  furnished  by  Man- 
chester under  the  pretense  that  it  came  from  the 
specter.  If  this  man  is  not  the  paltriest  fraud  that 
lives,  I  owe  him  an  apology: 

Question.     Where  are  you? 

Answer.     In  the  spirit  world. 

Q.    Are  you  happy? 

A.     Very  happy.     Perfectly  happy. 

Q.     How  do  you  amuse  yourself? 

A.     Conversation  with  friends,  and  other  spirits. 

Q.     What  else? 

A.     Nothing  else.     Nothing  else  is  necessary. 

Q.     What  do  you  talk  about? 

A.  About  how  happy  we  are;  and  about  friends 
left  behind  in  the  earth,  and  how  to  influence  them 
for  their  good. 

Q.  When  your  friends  in  the  earth  all  get  to  the 
spirit  land,  what  shall  you  have  to  talk  about  then? 
— nothing  but  about  how  happy  you  all  are? 

No  reply.  It  is  explained  that  spirits  will  not 
answer  frivolous  questions. 

Q.  How  is  it  that  spirits  that  are  content  to 
spend  an  eternity  in  frivolous  employments,  and 
accept  it  as  happiness,  are  so  fastidious  about  frivo- 
lous questions  upon  the  subject  ? 

No  reply. 

387 


MARK     TWAIN 

Q.    Would  you  like  to  come  back? 

A.     No. 

Q.     Would  you  say  that  under  oath? 

A.     Yes. 

Q.     What  do  you  eat  there? 

A.     We  do  not  eat. 

Q.     What  do  you  drink? 

A.     We  do  not  drink. 

Q.     What  do  you  smoke? 

A.     We  do  not  smoke. 

Q.     What  do  you  read? 

A.     We  do  not  read. 

Q.     Do  all  the  good  people  go  to  your  place? 

A.    Yes. 

Q.  You  know  my  present  way  of  life.  Can  you 
suggest  any  additions  to  it,  in  the  way  of  crime,  that 
will  reasonably  insure  my  going  to  some  other  place? 

No  reply. 

Q.     When  did  you  die  ? 

A.     I  did  not  die;  I  passed  away. 

Q.  Very  well,  then;  when  did  you  pass  away? 
How  long  have  you  been  in  the  spirit  land? 

A.     We  have  no  measurements  of  time  here. 

Q.  Though  you  may  be  indifferent  and  uncertain 
as  to  dates  and  times  in  your  present  condition  and 
environment,  this  has  nothing  to  do  with  your  former 
condition.  You  had  dates  then.  One  of  these  is 
what  I  ask  for.  You  departed  on  a  certain  day  in 
a  certain  year.  Is  not  this  true? 

A.    Yes. 

Q.     Then  name  the  day  of  the  month. 

(Much  fumbling  with  pencil,  on  the  part  of  the 
388 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

medium,  accompanied  by  violent  spasmodic  jerkings 
of  his  head  and  body,  for  some  little  time.  Finally, 
explanation  to  the  effect  that  spirits  often  forget 
dates,  such  things  being  without  importance  to 
them.) 

Q.  Then  this  one  has  actually  forgotten  the  date 
of  its  translation  to  the  spirit  land? 

This  was  granted  to  be  the  case. 

Q.  This  is  very  curious.  Well,  then,  what  year 
was  it? 

(More  fumbling,  jerking,  idiotic  spasms,  on  the 
part  of  the  medium.  Finally,  explanation  to  the 
effect  that  the  spirit  has  forgotten  the  year.) 

Q.  This  is  indeed  stupendous.  Let  me  put  one 
more  question,  one  last  question,  to  you,  before  we 
part  to  meet  no  more;  for  even  if  I  failed  to  avoid 
your  asylum,  a  meeting  there  will  go  for  nothing  as 
a  meeting,  since  by  that  time  you  will  easily  have 
forgotten  me  and  my  name.  Did  you  die  a  natural 
death,  or  were  you  cut  off  by  a  catastrophe? 

A.  (After  a  long  hesitation  and  many  throes  and 
spasms.)  Natural  death, 

This  ended  the  interview.  My  friend  told  the 
medium  that  when  his  relative  was  in  this  poor 
world,  he  was  endowed  with  an  extraordinary  in- 
tellect and  an  absolutely  defectless  memory,  and  it 
seemed  a  great  pity  that  he  had  not  been  allowed 
to  keep  some  shred  of  these  for  his  amusement  in  the 
realms  of  everlasting  contentment,  and  for  the 
amazement  and  admiration  of  the  rest  of  the  popu- 
lation there. 

This  man  had  plenty  of  clients — has  plenty  yet. 
389 


MARK     TWAIN 

He  receives  letters  from  spirits  located  in  every  part 
of  the  spirit  world,  and  delivers  them  all  over  this 
country  through  the  United  States  mail.  These 
letters  are  filled  with  advice — advice  from  "spirits" 
who  don't  know  as  much  as  a  tadpole — and  this 
advice  is  religiously  followed  by  the  receivers.  One 
of  these  clients  was  a  man  whom  the  spirits  (if  one 
may  thus  plurally  describe  the  ingenious  Man- 
chester) were  teaching  how  to  contrive  an  improved 
railway  car- wheel.  It  is  coarse  employment  for  a 
spirit,  but  it  is  higher  and  wholesomer  activity  than 
talking  forever  about  "how  happy  we  are." 


CHAPTER  XLIX 

EPISODES    IN    PILOT   LIFE 

IN  the  course  of  the  tugboat  gossip,  it  came  out 
that  out  of  every  five  of  my  former  friends  who 
had  quitted  the  river,  four  had  chosen  farming  as 
an  occupation.  Of  course  this  was  not  because  they 
were  peculiarly  gifted  agriculturally,  and  thus  more 
likely  to  succeed  as  farmers  than  in  other  industries : 
the  reason  for  their  choice  must  be  traced  to  some 
other  source.  Doubtless  they  chose  farming  because 
that  life  is  private  and  secluded  from  irruptions  of 
undesirable  strangers — like  the  pilot-house  hermit- 
age. And  doubtless  they  also  chose  it  because  on  a 
thousand  nights  of  black  storm  and  danger  they 
had  noted  the  twinkling  lights  of  solitary  farm- 
houses, as  the  boat  swung  by,  and  pictured  to  them- 
selves the  serenity  and  security  and  coziness  of 
such  refuges  at  such  times,  and  so  had  by  and  by 
come  to  dream  of  that  retired  and  peaceful  life  as 
the  one  desirable  thing  to  long  for,  anticipate,  earn, 
and  at  last  enjoy. 

But  I  did  not  learn  that  any  of  these  pilot-farmers 
had  astonished  anybody  with  their  successes.  Their 
farms  do  not  support  them:  they  support  their 
farms.  The  pilot-farmer  disappears  from  the  river 
annually,  about  the  breaking  of  spring,  and  is  seen 


MARK     TWAIN 

no  more  till  next  frost.  Then  he  appears  again,  in 
damaged  homespun,  combs  the  hayseed  out  of  his 
hair,  and  takes  a  pilot-house  berth  for  the  winter. 
In  this  way  he  pays  the  debts  which  his  farming 
has  achieved  during  the  agricultural  season.  So  his 
river  bondage  is  but  half  broken ;  he  is  still  the  river's 
slave  the  hardest  half  of  the  year. 

One  of  these  men  bought  a  farm,  but  did  riot 
retire  to  it.  He  knew  a  trick  worth  two  of  that. 
He  did  not  propose  to  pauperize  his  farm  by  apply- 
ing his  personal  ignorance  to  working  it.  No,  he 
put  the  farm  into  the  hands  of  an  agricultural  expert 
to  be  worked  on  shares — out  of  every  three  loads 
of  corn  the  expert  to  have  two  and  the  pilot  the 
third.  But  at  the  end  of  the  season  the  pilot  re- 
ceived no  corn.  The  expert  explained  that  his  share 
was  not  reached.  The  farm  produced  only  two  loads. 

Some  of  the  pilots  whom  I  had  known  had  had 
adventures — the  outcome  fortunate,  sometimes,  but 
not  in  all  cases.  Captain  Montgomery,  whom  I  had 
steered  for  when  he  was  a  pilot,  commanded  the 
Confederate  fleet  in  the  great  battle  before  Memphis ; 
when  his  vessel  went  down,  he  swam  ashore,  fought 
his  way  through  a  squad  of  soldiers,  and  made  a 
gallant  and  narrow  escape.  He  was  always  a  cool 
man;  nothing  could  disturb  his  serenity.  Once 
when  he  was  captain  of  the  Crescent  City,  I  was 
bringing  the  boat  into  port  at  New  Orleans,  and 
momently  expecting  orders  from  the  hurricane-deck, 
but  received  none.  I  had  stopped  the  wheels,  and 
there  my  authority  and  responsibility  ceased.  It 
was  evening — dim  twilight;  the  captain's  hat  was 
392 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

perched  upon  the  big  bell,  and  I  supposed  the  in- 
tellectual end  of  the  captain  was  in  it,  but  such  was 
not  the  case.  The  captain  was  very  strict;  therefore 
I  knew  better  than  to  touch  a  bell  without  orders. 
My  duty  was  to  hold  the  boat  steadily  on  her  calam- 
itous course,  and  leave  the  consequences  to  take 
care  of  themselves — which  I  did.  So  we  went 
plowing  past  the  sterns  of  steamboats  and  getting 
closer  and  closer — the  crash  was  bound  to  come 
very  soon — and  still  that  hat  never  budged ;  for  alas ! 
the  captain  was  napping  in  the  texas.  .  .  .  Things 
were  becoming  exceedingly  nervous  and  uncomfort- 
able. It  seemed  to  me  that  the  captain  was  not 
going  to  appear  in  time  to  see  the  entertainment. 
But  he  did.  Just  as  we  were  walking  into  the  stern 
of  a  steamboat,  he  stepped  out  on  deck,  and  said, 
with  heavenly  serenity,  "Set  her  back  on  both" — 
which  I  did;  but  a  trifle  late,  however,  for  the  next 
moment  we  went  smashing  through  that  other  boat's 
flimsy  outer  works  with  a  most  prodigious  racket. 
The  captain  never  said  a  word  to  me  about  the 
matter  afterward,  except  to  remark  that  I  had  done 
right,  and  that  he  hoped  I  would  not  hesitate  to  act 
in  the  same  way  again  in  like  circumstances. 

One  of  the  pilots  whom  I  had  known  when  I  was 
on  the  river  had  died  a  very  honorable  death.  His 
boat  caught  fire,  and  he  remained  at  the  wheel  until 
he  got  her  safe  to  land.  Then  he  went  out  over  the 
breast-board  with  his  clothing  in  flames,  and  was 
the  last  person  to  get  ashore.  He  died  from  his 
injuries  in  the  course  of  two  or  three  hours,  and  his 
was  the  only  life  lost. 

393 


MARK     TWAIN 

The  history  of  Mississippi  piloting  affords  six  or 
seven  instances  of  this  sort  of  martyrdom,  and  half 
a  hundred  instances  of  escape  from  a  like  fate  which 
came  within  a  second  or  two  of  being  fatally  too 
late;  but  there  is  no  instance  of  a  pilot  deserting  his 
post  to  save  his  life  while,  by  remaining  and  sacrificing 
it,  he  might  secure  other  lives  from  destruction.  It  is 
well  worth  while  to  set  down  this  noble  fact,  and 
well  worth  while  to  put  it  in  italics,  too. 

The  "cub"  pilot  is  early  admonished  to  despise 
all  perils  connected  with  a  pilot's  calling,  and  to 
prefer  any  sort  of  death  to  the  deep  dishonor  of 
deserting  his  post  while  there  is  any  possibility  of  his 
being  useful  in  it.  And  so  effectively  are  these 
admonitions  inculcated  that  even  young  and  but 
half-tried  pilots  can  be  depended  upon  to  stick  to 
the  wheel,  and  die  there  when  occasion  requires. 
In  a  Memphis  graveyard  is  buried  a  young  fellow 
who  perished  at  the  wheel  a  great  many  years  ago, 
in  White  River,  to  save  the  lives  of  other  men.  He 
said  to  the  captain  that  if  the  fire  would  give  him 
time  to  reach  a  sand-bar,  some  distance  away,  all 
could  be  saved,  but  that  to  land  against  the  bluff 
bank  of  the  river  would  be  to  insure  the  loss  of  many 
lives.  He  reached  the  bar  and  grounded  the  boat 
in  shallow  water;  but  by  that  time  the  flames  had 
closed  around  him,  and  in  escaping  through  them  he 
was  fatally  burned.  He  had  been  urged  to  fly 
sooner,  but  had  replied  as  became  a  pilot  to  reply: 

"I  will  not  go.  If  I  go,  nobody  will  be  saved.  If 
I  stay,  no  one  will  be  lost  but  me.  I  will  stay." 

There  were  two  hundred  persons  on  board,  and  no 
394 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

life  was  lost  but  the  pilot's.  There  used  to  be  a 
monument  to  this  young  fellow  in  that  Memphis 
graveyard.  While  we  tarried  in  Memphis  on  our 
down  trip,  I  started  out  to  look  for  it,  but  our  time 
was  so  brief  that  I  was  obliged  to  turn  back  before 
my  object  was  accomplished. 

The  tugboat  gossip  informed  me  that  Dick  Kennet 
was  dead — blown  up,  near  Memphis,  and  killed; 
that  several  others  whom  I  had  known  had  fallen  in 
the  war — one  or  two  of  them  shot  down  at  the  wheel; 
that  another  and  very  particular  friend,  whom  I  had 
steered  many  trips  for,  had  stepped  out  of  his  house 
in  New  Orleans,  one  night  years  ago,  to  collect  some 
money  in  a  remote  part  of  the  city,  and  had  never 
been  seen  again — was  murdered  and  thrown  into  the 
river,  it  was  thought ;  that  Ben  Thornburg  was  dead 
long  ago;  also  his  wild  "cub,"  whom  I  used  to 
quarrel  with  all  through  every  daylight  watch.  A 
heedless,  reckless  creature  he  was,  and  always  in  hot 
water,  always  in  mischief.  An  Arkansas  passenger 
brought  an  enormous  bear  aboard  one  day,  and 
chained  him  to  a  life-boat  on  the  hurricane-deck. 
Thornburg's  "cub"  could  not  rest  till  he  had  gone 
there  and  unchained  the  bear,  to  "see  what  he 
would  do."  He  was  promptly  gratified.  The  bear 
chased  him  around  and  around  the  deck,  for  miles 
and  miles,  with  two  hundred  eager  faces  grinning 
through  the  railings  for  audience,  and  finally  snatched 
off  the  lad's  coat-tail  and  went  into  the  texas  to 
chew  it.  The  off-watch  turned  out  with  alacrity, 
and  left  the  bear  in  sole  possession.  He  presently 
grew  lonesome,  and  started  out  for  recreation.  He 
395 


MARK     TWAIN 

ranged  the  whole  boat — visited  every  part  of  it,  with 
an  advance-guard  of  fleeing  people  in  front  of  him 
and  a  voiceless  vacancy  behind  him;  and  when  his 
owner  captured  him  at  last,  those  two  were  the  only 
visible  beings  anywhere;  everybody  else  was  in 
hiding,  and  the  boat  was  a  solitude. 

I  was  told  that  one  of  my  pilot  friends  fell  dead  at 
the  wheel,  from  heart  disease,  in  1869.  The  cap- 
tain was  on  the  roof  at  the  time.  He  saw  the  boat 
breaking  for  the  shore;  shouted,  and  got  no  answer; 
ran  up,  and  found  the  pilot  lying  dead  on  the  floor. 

Mr.  Bixby  had  been  blown  up  in  Madrid  Bend; 
was  not  injured,  but  the  other  pilot  was  lost. 

George  Ritchie  had  been  blown  up  near  Memphis 
— blown  into  the  river  from  the  wheel,  and  disabled. 
The  water  was  very  cold;  he  clung  to  a  cotton-bale 
— mainly  with  his  teeth — and  floated  until  nearly 
exhausted,  when  he  was  rescued  by  some  deck-hands 
who  were  on  a  piece  of  the  wreck.  They  tore  open 
the  bale  and  packed  him  in  the  cotton,  and  warmed 
the  life  back  into  him,  and  got  him  safe  to  Memphis. 
He  is  one  of  Bixby's  pilots  on  the  Baton  Rouge  now. 

Into  the  life  of  a  steamboat  clerk,  now  dead,  had 
dropped  a  bit  of  romance — somewhat  grotesque  ro- 
mance, but  romance  nevertheless.  When  I  knew  him 
he  was  a  shiftless  young  spendthrift,  boisterous, 
good-hearted,  full  of  careless  generosities,  and  pretty 
conspicuously  promising  to  fool  his  possibilities 
away  early,  and  come  to  nothing.  In  a  Western  city 
lived  a  rich  and  childless  old  foreigner  and  his  wife; 
and  in  their  family  was  a  comely  young  girl — sort  of 
friend,  sort  of  servant.  The  young  clerk  of  whom 
306 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

I  have  been  speaking — whose  name  was  not  George 
Johnson,  but  who  shall  be  called  George  Johnson  for 
the  purposes  of  this  narrative — got  acquainted  with 
this  young  girl,  and  they  sinned;  and  the  old  for- 
eigner found  them  out  and  rebuked  them.  Being 
ashamed,  they  lied,  and  said  they  were  married ;  that 
they  had  been  privately  married.  Then  the  old 
foreigner's  hurt  was  healed,  and  he  forgave  and 
blessed  them.  After  that,  they  were  able  to  con- 
tinue their  sin  without  concealment.  By  and  by  the 
foreigner's  wife  died ;  and  presently  he  followed  after 
her.  Friends  of  the  family  assembled  to  mourn;  and 
among  the  mourners  sat  the  two  young  sinners. 
The  will  was  opened  and  solemnly  read.  It  be- 
queathed every  penny  of  that  old  man's  great  wealth 
to  Mrs.  George  Johnson! 

And  there  was  no  such  person.  The  young  sinners 
fled  forth  then  and  did  a  very  foolish  thing :  married 
themselves  before  an  obscure  justice  of  the  peace, 
and  got  him  to  antedate  the  thing.  That  did  no  sort 
of  good.  The  distant  relatives  nocked  in  and  ex- 
posed the  fraudful  date  with  extreme  suddenness  and 
surprising  ease,  and  carried  off  the  fortune,  leaving 
the  Johnsons  very  legitimately,  and  legally,  and 
irrevocably  chained  together,  in  honorable  marriage, 
but  with  not  so  much  as  a  penny  to  bless  themselves 
withal.  Such  are  the  actual  facts ;  and  not  all  novels 
have  for  a  base  so  telling  a  situation. 


CHAPTER  L 
THE  "ORIGINAL  JACOBS" 

WE  had  some  talk  about  Captain  Isaiah  Sel- 
lers, now  many  years  dead.  He  was  a  fine 
man,  a  high-minded  man,  and  greatly  respected  both 
ashore  and  on  the  river.  He  was  very  tall,  well  built, 
and  handsome;  and  in  his  old  age — as  I  remember 
him — his  hair  was  as  black  as  an  Indian's,  and  his 
eye  and  hand  were  as  strong  and  steady  and  his 
nerve  and  judgment  as  firm  and  clear  as  anybody's, 
young  or  old,  among  the  fraternity  of  pilots.  He  was 
the  patriarch  of  the 'craft;  he  had  been  a  keelboat 
pilot  before  the  day  of  steamboats ;  and  a  steamboat 
pilot  before  any  other  steamboat  pilot,  still  surviving 
at  the  time  I  speak  of,  had  ever  turned  a  wheel. 
Consequently,  his  brethren  held  him  in  the  sort  of 
awe  in  which  illustrious  survivors  of  a  bygone  age 
are  always  held  by  their  associates.  He  knew  how 
he  was  regarded,  and  perhaps  this  fact  added  some 
trifle  of  stiffening  to  his  natural  dignity,  which  had 
been  sufficiently  stiff  in  its  original  state. 

He  left  a  diary  behind  him;  but  apparently  it  did 
not  date  back  to  his  first  steamboat  trip,  which 
was  said  to  be  1811,  the  year  the  first  steamboat 
disturbed  the  waters  of  the  Mississippi.  At  the 
time  of  his  death  a  correspondent  of  the  St.  Louis 
398 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

Republican  culled   the    following   items    from    the 
diary: 

In  February,  1825,  he  shipped  on  board  the  steamer  Rambler, 
at  Florence,  Ala.,  and  made  during  that  year  three  trips  to  New 
Orleans  and  back — this  on  the  General  Carrol,  between  Nashville 
and  New  Orleans.  It  was  during  his  stay  on  this  boat  that 
Captain  Sellers  introduced  the  tap  of  the  bell  as  a  signal  to  heave 
the  lead;  previous  to  which  time  it  was  the  custom  for  the  pilot 
to  speak  to  the  men  below  when  soundings  were  wanted.  The 
proximity  of  the  forecastle  to  the  pilot-house,  no  doubt,  rendered 
this  an  easy  matter;  but  how  different  on  one  of  our  palaces  of 
the  present  day! 

In  1827  we  find  him  on  board  the  President,  a  boat  of  two 
hundred  and  eighty-five  tons  burden,  and  plying  between  Smith- 
land  and  New  Orleans.  Thence  he  joined  the  Jubilee  in  1828, 
and  on  this  boat  he  did  his  first  piloting  in  the  St.  Louis  trade; 
his  first  watch  extending  from  Herculaneum  to  St.  Genevieve. 
On  May  26,  1836,  he  completed  and  left  Pittsburg  in  charge  of 
the  steamer  Prairie,  a  boat  of  four  hundred  tons,  and  the  first 
steamer  with  a  stateroom  cabin  ever  seen  at  St.  Louis.  In  1857  he 
introduced  the  signal  for  meeting  boats,  and  which  has,  with 
some  slight  change,  been  the  universal  custom  of  this  day;  in 
fact,  is  rendered  obligatory  by  act  of  Congress. 

As  general  items  of  river  history,  we  quote  the  following  mar- 
ginal notes  from  his  general  log: 

In  March,  1825,  General  Lafayette  left  New  Orleans  for 
St.  Louis  on  the  low-pressure  steamer  Natchez. 

In  January,  1828,  twenty-one  steamers  left  the  New  Orleans 
wharf  to  celebrate  the  occasion  of  General  Jackson's  visit  to 
that  city. 

In  1830  the  North  American  made  the  run  from  New  Orleans 
to  Memphis  in  six  days — best  time  on  record  to  that  date.  It 
has  since  been  made  in  two  days  and  ten  hours. 

In  1831  the  Red  River  cut-off  formed. 

In  1832  steamer  Hudson  made  the  run  from  White  River  to 
Helena,  a  distance  of  seventy-five  miles,  in  twelve  hours.  This 
was  the  source  of  much  talk  and  speculation  among  parties 
directly  interested. 

In  1839  Great  Horseshoe  cut-off  formed. 

399 


MARK     TWAIN 

Up  to  the  present  time,  a  term  of  thirty-five  years,  we  ascer- 
tain, by  reference  to  the  diary,  he  has  made  four  hundred  and 
sixty  round  trips  to  New  Orleans,  which  gives  a  distance  of  one 
million  one  hundred  and  four  thousand  miles,  or  an  average  of 
eighty-six  miles  a  day. 

Whenever  Captain  Sellers  approached  a  body  of 
gossiping  pilots,  a  chill  fell  there,  and  talking  ceased. 
For  this  reason:  whenever  six  pilots  were  gathered 
together,  there  would  always  be  one  or  two  newly 
fledged  ones  in  the  lot,  and  the  elder  ones  would  be 
always  "showing  off"  before  these  poor  fellows; 
making  them  sorrowfully  feel  how  callow  they  were, 
how  recent  their  nobility,  and  how  humble  their 
degree,  by  talking  largely  and  vaporously  of  old- 
time  experiences  on  the  river;  always  making  it  a 
point  to  date  everything  back  as  far  as  they  could, 
so  as  to  make  the  new  men  feel  their  newness  to  the 
sharpest  degree  possible,  and  envy  the  old  stagers  in 
the  like  degree.  And  how  these  complacent  bald- 
heads  would  swell,  and  brag,  and  lie,  and  date  back — 
ten,  fifteen,  twenty  years,  and  how  they  did  enjoy 
the  effect  produced  upon  the  marveling  and  envying 
youngsters ! 

And  perhaps  just  at  this  happy  stage  of  the  pro- 
ceedings, the  stately  figure  of  Captain  Isaiah  Sellers, 
that  real  and  only  genuine  Son  of  Antiquity,  would 
drift  solemnly  into  the  midst.  Imagine  the  size  of 
the  silence  that  would  result  on  the  instant!  And 
imagine  the  feelings  of  those  baldheads,  and  the 
exultation  of  their  recent  audience,  when  the  ancient 
captain  would  begin  to  drop  casual  and  indifferent 
remarks  of  a  reminiscent  nature — about  islands  that 
400 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

had  disappeared,  and  cut-offs  that  had  been  made, 
a  generation  before  the  oldest  baldhead  in  the 
company  had  ever  set  his  foot  in  a  pilot-house ! 

Many  and  many  a  time  did  this  ancient  mariner 
appear  on  the  scene  in  the  above  fashion,  and  spread 
disaster  and  humiliation  around  him.  If  one  might 
believe  the  pilots,  he  always  dated  his  islands  back 
to  the  misty  dawn  of  river  history;  and  he  never 
used  the  same  island  twice ;  and  never  did  he  employ 
an  island  that  still  existed,  or  give  one  a  name  which 
anybody  present  was  old  enough  to  have  heard  of 
before.  If  you  might  believe  the  pilots,  he  was 
always  conscientiously  particular  about  little  de- 
tails; never  spoke  of  "the  state  of  Mississippi,"  for 
instance  —  no,  he  would  say,  "When  the  state  of 
Mississippi  was  where  Arkansas  now  is";  and  would 
never  speak  of  Louisiana  or  Missouri  in  a  general 
way,  and  leave  an  incorrect  impression  on  your 
mind — no,  he  would  say,  "When  Louisiana  was  up 
the  river  farther,"  or  "When  Missouri  was  on  the 
Illinois  side." 

The  old  gentleman  was  not  of  literary  turn  or 
capacity,  but  he  used  to  jot  down  brief  paragraphs 
of  plain,  practical  information  about  the  river,  and 
sign  them  "MARK  TWAIN,"  and  give  them  to  the 
New  Orleans  Picayune.  They  related  to  the  stage 
and  condition  of  the  river,  and  were  accurate  and 
valuable ;  and  thus  far  they  contained  no  poison.  But 
in  speaking  of  the  stage  of  the  river  to-day  at  a  given 
point,  the  captain  was  pretty  apt  to  drop  in  a  little 
remark  about  this  being  the  first  time  he  had  seen 
the  water  so  high  or  so  low  at  that  particular  point 
401 


MARK    TWAIN 

in  forty-nine  years;  and  now  and  then  he  would 
mention  Island  so-and-so,  and  follow  it,  in  paren- 
theses, with  some  such  observation  as  "disappeared 
in  1807,  if  I  remember  rightly."  In  these  antique 
interjections  lay  poison  and  bitterness  for  the  other 
old  pilots,  and  they  used  to  chaff  the  "Mark  Twain" 
paragraphs  with  unsparing  mockery. 

It  so  chanced  that  one  of  these  paragraphs1  became 
the  text  for  my  first  newspaper  article.  I  bur- 
lesqued it  broadly,  very  broadly,  stringing  my  fan- 
tastics  out  to  the  extent  of  eight  hundred  or  a  thou- 
sand words.  I  was  a  "cub"  at  the  time.  I  showed 
my  performance  to  some  pilots,  and  they  eagerly 
rushed  it  into  print  in  the  New  Orleans  True  Delta. 
It  was  a  great  pity;  for  it  did  nobody  any  worthy 
service,  and  it  sent  a  pang  deep  into  a  good  man's 
heart.  There  was  no  malice  in  my  rubbish;  but  it 
laughed  at  the  captain.  It  laughed  at  a  man  to 
whom  such  a  thing  was  new  and  strange  and  dread- 
ful. I  did  not  know  then,  though  I  do  now,  that 
there  is  no  suffering  comparable  with  that  which  a 
private  person  feels  when  he  is  for  the  first  time 
pilloried  in  print. 

Captain  Sellers  did  me  the  honor  to  profoundly 

1  The  original  MS.  of  it,  in  the  captain's  own  hand,  has  been  sent 
to  me  from  New  Orleans.  It  reads  as  follows: 

"  VICKSBURG,  May  4,  1859. 

"My  opinion  for  the  benefit  of  the  citizens  of  New  Orleans:  The 
water  is  higher  this  far  up  than  it  has  been  since  1815.  My  opinion 
is  that  the  water  will  be  4  feet  deep  in  Canal  Street  before  the  first 
of  next  June.  Mrs.  Turner's  plantation  at  the  head  of  Big  Black 
Island  is  all  under  water,  and  it  has  not  been  since  1815. 

"I.  SELLERS." 
402 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

detest  me  from  that  day  forth.  When  I  say  he  did 
me  the  honor,  I  am  not  using  empty  words.  It 
was  a  very  real  honor  to  be  in  the  thoughts  of  so 
great  a  man  as  Captain  Sellers,  and  I  had  wit  enough 
to  appreciate  it  and  be  proud  of  it.  It  was  dis- 
tinction to  be  loved  by  such  a  man;  but  it  was  a 
much  greater  distinction  to  be  hated  by  him,  be- 
cause he  loved  scores  of  people;  but  he  didn't  sit  up 
nights  to  hate  anybody  but  me. 

He  never  printed  another  paragraph  while  he 
lived,  and  he  never  again  signed  "Mark  Twain"  to 
anything.  At  the  time  that  the  telegraph  brought 
the  news  of  his  death,  I  was  on  the  Pacific  coast. 
I  was  a  fresh,  new  journalist,  and  needed  a  nom  de 
guerre;  so  I  confiscated  the  ancient  mariner's  dis- 
carded one,  and  have  done  my  best  to  make  it 
remain  what  it  was  in  his  hands — a  sign  and  symbol 
and  warrant  that  whatever  is  found  in  its  company 
may  be  gambled  on  as  being  the  petrified  truth. 
How  I've  succeeded,  it  would  not  be  modest  in  me 
to  say. 

The  captain  had  an  honorable  pride  in  his  pro- 
fession and  an  abiding  love  for  it.  He  ordered  his 
monument  before  he  died,  and  kept  it  near  him 
until  he  did  die.  It  stands  over  his  grave  now, 
in  Bellefontaine  Cemetery,  St.  Louis.  It  is  his 
image,  in  marble,  standing  on  duty  at  the  pilot- 
wheel;  and  worthy  to  stand  and  confront  criticism, 
for  it  represents  a  man  who  in  life  would  have 
stayed  there  till  he  burned  to  a  cinder,  if  duty  re- 
quired it. 

The  finest  thing  we  saw  on  our  whole  Mississippi 
403 


MARK     TWAIN 

trip,  we  saw  as  we  approached  New  Orleans  in  the 
steam-tug.     This  was  the  curving  frontage  of  the 
Crescent  City  lit  up  with  the  white  glare  of  five  » 
miles  of  electric  lights.     It  was  a  wonderful  sight, 
and  very  beautiful. 


CHAPTER  LI 

REMINISCENCES 

WE  left  for  St.  Louis  in  the  City  of  Baton 
Rouge,  on  a  delightfully  hot  day,  but  with  the 
main  purpose  of  my  visit  but  lamely  accomplished. 
I  had  hoped  to  hunt  up  and  talk  with  a  hundred 
steamboatmen,  but  got  so  pleasantly  involved  in  the 
social  life  of  the  town  that  I  got  nothing  more  than 
mere  five-minute  talks  with  a  couple  of  dozen  of  the 
craft. 

I  was  on  the  bench  of  the  pilot-house  when  we 
backed  out  and  "straightened  up"  for  the  start — 
the  boat  pausing  for  a  "good  ready,"  in  the  old- 
fashioned  way,  and  the  black  smoke  piling  out  of  the 
chimneys  equally  in  the.  old-fashioned  way.  Then 
we  began  to  gather  momentum,  and  presently  were 
fairly  under  way  and  booming  along.  It  was  all  as 
natural  and  familiar — and  so  were  the  shoreward 
sights — as  if  there  had  been  no  break  in  my  river 
life.  There  was  a  "cub,"  and  I  judged  that  he 
would  take  the  wheel  now;  and  he  did.  Captain 
Bixby  stepped  into  the  pilot-house.  Presently  the 
cub  closed  up  on  the  rank  of  steamships.  He  made 
me  nervous,  for  he  allowed  too  much  water  to  show 
between  our  boat  and  the  ships.  I  knew  quite  well 
what  was  going  to  happen,  because  I  could  date  back 
405 


MARK    TWAIN 

in  my  own  life  and  inspect  the  record.  The  captain 
looked  on,  during  a  silent  half -minute,  then  took  the 
wheel  himself,  and  crowded  the  boat  in,  till  she  went 
scraping  along  within  a  hand-breadth  of  the  ships. 
It  was  exactly  the  favor  which  he  had  done  me, 
about  a  quarter  of  a  century  before,  in  that  same 
spot,  the  first  time  I  ever  steamed  out  of  the  port 
of  New  Orleans.  It  was  a  very  great  and  sincere 
pleasure  to  me  to  see  the  thing  repeated — with  some- 
body else  as  victim. 

We  made  Natchez  (three  hundred  miles)  in  twenty- 
two  hours  and  a  half — much  the  swiftest  passage  I 
have  ever  made  over  that  piece  of  water. 

The  next  morning  I  came  on  with  the  four-o'clock 
watch,  and  saw  Ritchie  successfully  run  half  a  dozen 
crossings  in  a  fog,  using  for  his  guidance  the  marked 
chart  devised  and  patented  by  Bixby  himself.  This 
sufficiently  evidenced  the  great  value  of  the  chart. 

By  and  by,  when  the  fog  began  to  clear  off,  I 
noticed  that  the  reflection  of  a  tree  in  the  smooth 
water  of  an  overflowed  bank,  six  hundred  yards 
away,  was  stronger  and  blacker  than  the  ghostly 
tree  itself.  The  faint,  spectral  trees,  dimly  glimpsed 
through  the  shredding  fog,  were  very  pretty  things 
to  see. 

We  had  a  heavy  thunder-storm  at  Natchez,  an- 
other at  Vicksburg,  and  still  another  about  fifty 
miles  below  Memphis.  They  had  an  old-fashioned 
energy  which  had  long  been  unfamiliar  to  me.  This 
third  storm  was  accompanied  by  a  raging  wind. 
We  tied  up  to  the  bank  when  we  saw  the  tempest 
coming,  and  everybody  left  the  pilot-house  but  me. 
406 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

The  wind  bent  the  young  trees  down,  exposing  the 
pale  underside  of  the  leaves;  and  gust  after  gust 
followed,  in  quick  succession,  thrashing  the  branches 
violently  up  and  down,  and  to  this  side  and  that, 
and  creating  swift  waves  of  alternating  green  and 
white,  according  to  the  side  of  the  leaf  that  was 
exposed,  and  these  waves  raced  after  each  other  as 
do  their  kind  over  a  wind-tossed  field  of  oats.  No 
color  that  was  visible  anywhere  was  quite  natural — 
all  tints  were  charged  with  a  leaden  tinge  from  the 
solid  cloud-bank  overhead.  The  river  was  leaden, 
all  distances  the  same;  and  even  the  far-reaching 
ranks  of  combing  whitecaps  were  dully  shaded  by 
the  dark,  rich  atmosphere  through  which  their 
swarming  legions  marched.  The  thunder-peals  were 
constant  and  deafening ;  explosion  followed  explosion 
with  but  inconsequential  intervals  between,  and  the 
reports  grew  steadily  sharper  and  higher-keyed,  and 
more  trying  to  the  ear;  the  lightning  was  as  diligent 
as  the  thunder,  and  produced  effects  which  en- 
chanted the  eye  and  set  electric  ecstasies  of  mixed 
delight  and  apprehension  shivering  along  every  nerve 
in  the  body  in  unintermittent  procession.  The  rain 
poured  down  in  amazing  volume;  the  ear-splitting 
thunder-peals  broke  nearer  and  nearer;  the  wind 
increased  in  fury  and  began  to  wrench  off  boughs 
and  tree-tops  and  send  them  sailing  away  through 
space;  the  pilot-house  fell  to  rocking  and  straining 
and  cracking  and  surging,  and  I  went  down  in  the 
hold  to  see  what  time  it  was. 

People  boast  a  good  deal  about  Alpine  thunder- 
storms ;  but  the  storms  which  I  have  had  the  luck  to 
407 


MARK     TWAIN 

see  in  the  Alps  were  not  the  equals  of  some  which 
I  have  seen  in  the  Mississippi  valley.  I  may  not 
have  seen  the  Alps  do  their  best,  of  course,  and  if 
they  can  beat  the  Mississippi,  I  don't  wish  to. 

On  this  up -trip  I  saw  a  little  towhead  (infant 
island)  half  a  mile  long,  which  had  been  formed 
during  the  past  nineteen  years.  Since  there  was  so 
much  time  to  spare  that  nineteen  years  of  it  could 
be  devoted  to  the  construction  of  a  mere  towhead, 
where  was  the  use,  originally,  in  rushing  this  whole 
globe  through  in  six  days?  It  is  likely  that  if  more 
time  had  been  taken,  in  the  first  place,  the  world 
would  have  been  made  right,  and  this  ceaseless 
improving  and  repairing  would  not  be  necessary 
now.  But  if  you  hurry  a  world  or  a  house,  you  are 
nearly  sure  to  find  out  by  and  by  that  you  have 
left  out  a  towhead,  or  a  broom-closet,  or  some  other 
little  convenience,  here  and  there,  which  has  got 
to  be  supplied,  no  matter  how  much  expense  or 
vexation  it  may  cost. 

We  had  a  succession  of  black  nights,  going  up  the 
river,  and  it  was  observable  that  whenever  we 
landed,  and  suddenly  inundated  the  trees  with  the 
intense  sunburst  of  the  electric  light,  a  certain  curious 
effect  was  always  produced ;  hundred  of  birds  flocked 
instantly  out  from  the  masses  of  shining  green 
foliage,  and  went  careering  hither  and  thither 
through  the  white  rays,  and  often  a  song-bird  tuned 
up  and  fell  to  singing.  We  judged  that  they  mistook 
this  superb  artificial  day  for  the  genuine  article. 

We  had  a  delightful  trip  in  that  thoroughly  well- 
ordered  steamer,  and  regretted  that  it  was  accom- 
408 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

plished  so  speedily.  By  means  of  diligence  and 
activity,  we  managed  to  hunt  out  nearly  all  the  old 
friends.  One  was  missing,  however;  he  went  to  his 
reward,  whatever  it  was,  two  years  ago.  But  I 
found  out  all  about  him.  His  case  helped  me  to 
realize  how  lasting  can  be  the  effect  of  a  very  trifling 
occurrence.  When  he  was  an  apprentice-blacksmith 
in  our  village,  and  I  a  school-boy,  a  couple  of  young 
Englishmen  came  to  the  town  and  sojourned  awhile ; 
and  one  day  they  got  themselves  up  in  cheap  royal 
finery  and  did  the  Richard  III.  sword-fight  with 
maniac  energy  and  prodigious  powwow,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  village  boys.  This  blacksmith  cub  was 
there,  and  the  histrionic  poison  entered  his  bones. 
This  vast,  lumbering,  ignorant,  dull-witted  lout  was 
stage-struck,  and  irrecoverably.  He  disappeared, 
and  presently  turned  up  in  St.  Louis.  I  ran  across 
him  there,  by  and  by.  He  was  standing  musing  on 
a  street-corner,  with  his  right  hand  on  his  hip,  the 
thumb  of  his  left  supporting  his  chin,  face  bowed  and 
frowning,  slouch  hat  pulled  down  over  his  forehead — 
imagining  himself  to  be  Othello  or  some  such  char- 
acter, and  imagining  that  the  passing  crowd  marked 
his  tragic  bearing  and  were  awe-struck. 

I  joined  him,  and  tried  to  get  him  down  out  of 
the  clouds,  but  did  not  succeed.  However,  he  cas- 
ually informed  me,  presently,  that  he  was  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Walnut  Street  Theater  company — and  he 
tried  to  say  it  with  indifference,  but  the  indifference 
was  thin,  and  a  mighty  exultation  showed  through 
it.  He  said  he  was  cast  for  a  part  in  "Julius  Caesar," 
for  that  night,  and  if  I  should  come  I  would  see  him. 
409 


•      MARK     TWAIN 

//  I  should  come!    I  said  I  wouldn't  miss  it  if  I 
were  dead. 

I  went  away  stupefied  with  astonishment,  and 
saying  to  myself,  "How  strange  it  is!  we  always 
thought  this  fellow  a  fool ;  yet  the  moment  he  comes 
to  a  great  city,  where  intelligence  and  appreciation 
abound,  the  talent  concealed  in  this  shabby  napkin 
is  at  once  discovered,  and  promptly  welcomed  and 
honored." 

But  I  came  away  from  the  theater  that  night  dis- 
appointed and  offended ;  for  I  had  had  no  glimpse  of 
my  hero,  and  his  name  was  not  in  the  bills.  I  met 
him  on  the  street  the  next  morning,  and  before  I 
could  speak,  he  asked: 

"Did  you  see  me?" 

"No,  you  weren't  there." 

He  looked  surprised  and  disappointed.     He  said: 

"Yes,  I  was.  Indeed,  I  was.  I  was  a  Roman 
soldier." 

"Which  one?" 

"Why,  didn't  you  see  them  Roman  soldiers  that 
stood  back  there  in  a  rank,  and  sometimes  marched 
in  procession  around  the  stage?" 

"Do  you  mean  the  Roman  army? — those  six  san- 
daled roustabouts  in  nightshirts,  with  tin  shields  and 
helmets,  that  marched  around  treading  on  each 
other's  heels,  in  charge  of  a  spider-legged  consump- 
tive dressed  like  themselves?" 

"That's  it!  that's  it!  I  was  one. of  them  Roman 
soldiers.  I  was  the  next  to  the  last  one.  A  half  a 
year  ago  I  used  to  always  be  the  last  one;  but  I've 
been  promoted." 

410 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

Well,  they  told  me  that  that  poor  fellow  remained 
a  Roman  soldier  to  the  last — a  matter  of  thirty-four 
years.  Sometimes  they  cast  him  for  a  "speaking 
part,"  but  not  an  elaborate  one.  He  could  be 
trusted  to  go  and  say,  "My  lord,  the  carriage  waits," 
but  if  they  ventured  to  add  a  sentence  or  two  to 
this,  his  memory  felt  the  strain  and  he  was  likely 
to  miss  fire.  Yet,  poor  devil,  he  had  been  patiently 
studying  the  part  of  Hamlet  for  more  than  thirty 
years,  and  he  lived  and  died  in  the  belief  that  some 
day  he  would  be  invited  to  play  it ! 

And  this  is  what  came  of  that  fleeting  visit  of 
those  young  Englishmen  to  our  village  such  ages  and 
ages  ago!  What  noble  horseshoes  this  man  might 
have  made,  but  for  those  Englishmen;  and  what  an 
inadequate  Roman  soldier  he  did  make! 

A  day  or  two  after  we  reached  St.  Louis,  I  was 
walking  along  Fourth  Street  when  a  grizzly-headed 
man  gave  a  sort  of  start  as  he  passed  me,  then 
stopped,  came  back,  inspected  me  narrowly,  with  a 
clouding  brow,  and  finally  said  with  deep  asperity: 

"Look  here,  have  you  got  that  drink  yet?1' 

A  maniac,  I  judged,  at  first.  But  all  in  a  flash  I 
recognized  him.  I  made  an  effort  to  blush  that 
strained  every  muscle  in  me,  and  answered  as 
sweetly  and  winningly  as  ever  I  knew  how: 

"Been  a  little  slow,  but  am  just  this  minute  closing 
in  on  the  place  where  they  keep  it.  Come  in  and 
help!" 

He  softened,  and  said  make  it  a  bottle  of  cham- 
pagne and  he  was  agreeable.  He  said  he  had  seen  my 
name  in  the  papers,  and  had  put  all  his  affairs  aside 
411 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  turned  out,  resolved  to  find  me  or  die ;  and  make 
me  answer  that  question  satisfactorily,  or  kill  me; 
though  the  most  of  his  late  asperity  had  been  rather 
counterfeit  than  otherwise. 

This  meeting  brought  back  to  me  the  St.  Louis 
riots  of  about  thirty  years  ago.  I  spent  a  week 
there,  at  that  time,  in  a  boarding-house,  and  had  this 
young  fellow  for  a  neighbor  across  the  hall.  We  saw 
some  of  the  fightings  and  killings;  and  by  and  by 
we  went  one  night  to  an  armory  where  two  hundred 
young  men  had  met,  upon  call,  to  be  armed  and  go 
forth  against  the  rioters,  under  command  of  a  military 
man.  We  drilled  till  about  ten  o'clock  at  night; 
then  news  came  that  the  mob  were  in  great  force 
in  the  lower  end  of  the  town,  and  were  sweeping 
everything  before  them.  Our  column  moved  at 
once.  It  was  a  very  hot  night,  and  my  musket  was 
very  heavy.  We  marched  and  marched;  and  the 
nearer  we  approached  the  seat  of  war,  the  hotter  I 
grew  and  the  thirstier  I  got.  I  was  behind  my 
friend;  so  finally,  I  asked  him  to  hold  my  musket 
while  I  dropped  out  and  got  a  drink.  Then  I 
branched  off  and  went  home.  I  was  not  feeling  any 
solicitude  about  him  of  course,  because  I  knew  he 
was  so  well  armed  now  that  he  could  take  care  of 
himself  without  any  trouble.  If  I  had  had  any 
doubts  about  that,  I  would  have  borrowed  another 
musket  for  him.  I  left  the  city  pretty  early  the 
next  morning,  and  if  this  grizzled  man  had  not  hap- 
pened to  encounter  my  name  in  the  papers  the  other 
day  in  St.  Louis,  and  felt  moved  to  seek  me  out,  I 
should  have  carried  to  my  grave  a  heart-torturing 
412 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

uncertainty  as  to  whether  he  ever  got  out  of  the 
riots  all  right  or  not.  I  ought  to  have  inquired, 
thirty  years  ago;  I  know  that.  And  I  would  have 
inquired,  if  I  had  had  the  muskets;  but,  in  the 
circumstances,  he  seemed  better  fixed  to  conduct  the 
investigations  than  I  was. 

One  Monday,  near  the  time  of  our  visit  to  St. 
Louis,  the  Globe-Democrat  came  out  with  a  couple  of 
pages  of  Sunday  statistics,  whereby  it  appeared  that 
119,448  St.  Louis  people  attended  the  morning  and 
evening  church  services  the  day  before,  and  23,102 
children  attended  Sunday-school .  Thus  142,550  per- 
sons, out  of  the  city's  total  of  400,000  population, 
respected  the  day  religiouswise.  I  found  these  sta- 
tistics, in  a  condensed  form,  in  a  telegram  of  the 
Associated  Press,  and  preserved  them.  They  made 
it  apparent  that  St.  Louis  was  in  a  higher  state  of 
grace  than  she  could  have  claimed  to  be  in  my 
time.  But  now  that  I  canvass  the  figures  narrowly, 
I  suspect  that  the  telegraph  mutilated  them.  It  can- 
not be  that  there  are  more  than  150,000  Catholics 
in  the  town;  the  other  250,000  must  be  classified  as 
Protestants.  Out  of  these  250,000,  according  to  this 
questionable  telegram,  only  26,362  attended  church 
and  Sunday-school,  while  out  of  the  150,000  Cath- 
olics, 116,188  went  to  church  and  Sunday-school. 


CHAPTER  LII 

A   BURNING   BRAND 

A,L  at  once  the  thought  came  into  my  mind,  "I 
have  not  sought  out  Mr.  Brown." 

Upon  that  text  I  desire  to  depart  from  the  direct 
line  of  my  subject  and  make  a  little  excursion.  I 
wish  to  reveal  a  secret  which  I  have  carried  with  me 
nine  years  and  which  has  become  burdensome. 

Upon  a  certain  occasion,  nine  years  ago,  I  had 
said,  with  strong  feeling,  "If  ever  I  see  St.  Louis 
again,  I  will  seek  out  Mr.  Brown,  the  great  grain 
merchant,  and  ask  of  him  the  privilege  of  shaking 
him  by  the  hand." 

The  occasion  and  the  circumstances  were  as  fol- 
lows. A  friend  of  mine,  a  clergyman,  came  one 
evening  and  said: 

"I  have  a  most  remarkable  letter  here,  which  I 
want  to  read  to  you,  if  I  can  do  it  without  breaking 
down.  I  must  preface  it  with  some  explanations, 
however.  The  letter  is  written  by  an  ex-thief  and 
ex-vagabond  of  the  lowest  origin  and  basest  rearing, 
a  man  all  stained  with  crime  and  steeped  in  igno- 
rance; but,  thank  God!  with  a  mine  of  pure  gold 
hidden  away  in  him,  as  you  shall  see.  His  letter  is 
written  to  a  burglar  named  Williams,  who  is  serving 
a  nine -year  term  in  a  certain  state  prison,  for 
414 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

burglary.  Williams  was  a  particularly  daring  bur- 
glar and  plied  that  trade  during  a  number  of  years; 
but  he  was  caught  at  last  and  jailed,  to  await  trial 
in  a  town  where  he  had  broken  into  a  house  at 
night,  pistol  in  hand,  and  forced  the  owner  to  hand 
over  to  him  eight  thousand  dollars  in  government 
bonds.  Williams  was  not  a  common  sort  of  person, 
by  any  means;  he  was  a  graduate  of  Harvard  Col- 
lege and  came  of  good  New  England  stock.  His 
father  was  a  clergyman.  While  lying  in  jail,  his 
health  began  to  fail,  and  he  was  threatened  with 
consumption.  This  fact,  together  with  the  oppor- 
tunity for  reflection  afforded  by  solitary  confine- 
ment, had  its  effect — its  natural  effect.  He  fell  into 
serious  thought;  his  early  training  asserted  itself 
with  power,  and  wrought  with  strong  influence  upon 
his  mind  and  heart.  He  put  his  old  life  behind  him 
and  became  an  earnest  Christian.  Some  ladies  in 
the  town  heard  of  this,  visited  him,  and  by  their 
encouraging  words  supported  him  in  his  good  reso- 
lutions and  strengthened  him  to  continue  in  his 
new  life.  The  trial  ended  in  his  conviction  and 
sentence  to  the  state  prison  for  the  term  of  nine 
years,  as  I  have  before  said.  In  the  prison  he 
became  acquainted  with  the  poor  wretch  referred  to 
in  the  beginning  of  my  talk,  Jack  Hunt,  the  writer 
of  the  letter  which  I  am  going  to  read.  You  will 
see  that  the  acquaintanceship  bore  fruit  for  Hunt. 
When  Hunt's  time  was  out,  he  wandered  to  St.  Louis; 
and  from  that  place  he  wrote  his  letter  to  Williams. 
The  letter  got  no  further  than  the  office  of  the 
prison  warden,  of  course;  prisoners  are  not  often 
415 


MARK     TWAIN 

allowed  to  receive  letters  from  outside.  The  prison 
authorities  read  this  letter,  but  did  not  destroy  it. 
They  had  not  the  heart  to  do  it.  They  read  it  to 
several  persons,  and  eventually  it  fell  into  the  hands 
of  those  ladies  of  whom  I  spoke  a  while  ago.  The 
other  day  I  came  across  an  old  friend  of  mine — a 
clergyman — who  had  seen  this  letter,  and  was  full 
of  it.  The  mere  remembrance  of  it  so  moved  him 
that  he  could  not  talk  of  it  without  his  voice  break- 
ing. He  promised  to  get  a  copy  of  it  for  me;  and 
here  it  is — an  exact  copy,  with  all  the  imperfections 
of  the  original  preserved.  It  has  many  slang  ex- 
pressions in  it — thieves'  argot — but  their  meaning 
has  been  interlined,  in  parentheses,  by  the  prison 
authorities : 

"  ST.  Louis,  June  gth,  1872. 

"  MR.  W friend  Charlie  if  i  may  call  you  so:  i  no  you  are 

surprised  to  get  a  letter  from  me,  but  i  hope  you  won't  be  mad  at 
my  writing  to  you.  i  want  to  tell  you  my  thanks  for  the  way 
you  talked  to  me  when  i  was  in  prison — it  has  led  me  to  try 
and  be  a  better  man;  i  guess  you  thought  i  did  not  cair  for  what 
you  said,  &  at  the  first  go  off  i  didn't,  but  i  noed  you  was  a  man 
who  had  don  big  work  with  good  men  &  want  no  sucker,  nor 
want  gasing  &  all  the  boys  knod  it. 

"  I  used  to  think  at  nite  what  you  said,  &  for  it  i  nocked  off 
swearing  5  months  before  my  time  was  up,  for  i  saw  it  want  no 
good,  nohow — the  day  my  time  was  up  you  told  me  if  i  would 
shake  the  cross  (quit  stealing),  &  live  on  the  square  for  3  months, 
it  would  be  the  best  job  i  ever  done  in  my  life.  The  state 
agent  give  me  a  ticket  to  here,  &  on  the  car  i  thought  more  of 
what  you  said  to  me,  but  didn't  make  up  my  mind.  When  we 
got  to  Chicago  on  the  cars  from  there  to  here,  I  pulled  off  an  old 
woman's  leather  (robbed  her  of  her  pocket-book] ;  i  hadn't  no  more 
than  got  it  off  when  i  wished  i  hadn't  done  it,  for  a  while  before 
that  i  made  up  my  mind  to  be  a  square  bloke,  for  3  months  on 
your  word,  but  i  forgot  it  when  i  saw  the  leather  was  a  grip 
416 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

(easy  to  get) — but  i  kept  clos  to  her  &  when  she  got  out  of  the 
cars  at  a  way  place  i  said,  marm  have  you  lost  anything?  & 
she  tumbled  (discovered)  her  leather  was  of  (gone) — is  this  it 
says  i,  giving  it  to  her — well  if  you  aint  honest,  says  she,  but 
i  hadn't  got  cheak  enough  to  stand  that  sort  of  talk,  so  i  left 
her  in  a  hurry.  When  i  got  here  i  had  $i  and  25  cents  left  &  i 
didn't  get  no  work  for  3  days  as  i  aint  strong  enough  for  roust 
about  on  a  steam  bote  (for  a  deck-hand) — The  afternoon  of  the 
3d  day  I  spent  my  last  10  cents  for  2  moons  (large,  round  sea- 
biscuit)  &  cheese  &  i  felt  pretty  rough  &  was  thinking  i  would 
have  to  go  on  the  dipe  (picking  pockets)  again,  when  i  thought 
of  what  you  once  said  about  a  fellows  calling  on  the  Lord  when 
he  was  in  hard  luck,  &  i  thought  i  would  try  it  once  anyhow, 
but  when  i  tryed  it  i  got  stuck  on  the  start,  &  all  i  could  get  off 
wos,  Lord  give  a  poor  fellow  a  chance  to  square  it  for  3  months 
for  Christ's  sake,  amen;  &  i  kept  a  thinking  it  over  and  over  as 
i  went  along — about  an  hour  after  that  i  was  in  4th  St.  &  this 
is  what  happened  &  is  the  cause  of  my  being  where  i  am  now 
&  about  which  i  will  tell  you  before  i  get  done  writing.  As  i 
was  walking  along  i  herd  a  big  noise  &  saw  a  horse  running 
away  with  a  carriage  with  2  children  in  it,  and  i  grabed  up  a 
peace  of  box  cover  from  the  sidewalk  &  run  in  the  middle  of  the 
street,  &  when  the  horse  came  up  i  smashed  him  over  the  head 
as  hard  as  i  could  drive — the  bord  split  to  peces  &  the  horse 
checked  up  a  little  &  i  grabbed  the  reigns  &  pulled  his  head 
down  until  he  stopped — the  gentleman  what  owned  him  came 
running  up  &  soon  as  he  saw  the  children  were  all  rite,  he  shook 
hands  with  me  &  gave  me  a  $50  green  back,  &  my  asking  the 
Lord  to  help  me  come  into  my  head,  &  i  was  so  thunderstruck 
i  couldn't  drop  the  reigns  nor  say  nothing — he  saw  something 
was  up,  &  coming  back  to  me  said,  my  boy  are  you  hurt?  &  the 
thought  come  into  my  head  just  then  to  ask  him  for  work;  &  i 
asked  him  to  take  back  the  bill  and  give  me  a  job — says  he,  jump 
in  here  &  lets  talk  about  it,  but  keep  the  money — he  asked  me  if  i 
could  take  care  of  horses  &  i  said  yes,  for  i  used  to  hang  round 
livery  stables  &  often  would  help  clean  &  drive  horses,  he  told 
me  he  wanted  a  man  for  that  work,  &  would  give  me  $16.  a  month 
&  bord  me.  You  bet  i  took  that  chance  at  once,  that  nite 
in  my  little  room  over  the  stable  i  sat  a  long  time  thinking  over 
my  past  life  &  of  what  had  just  happened  &  i  just  got  down 
on  my  nees  &  thanked  the  Lord  for  the  job  &  to  help  me  to 
417 


MARK     TWAIN 

square  it,  &  to  bless  you  for  putting  me  up  to  it,  &  the  next  morn- 
ing i  done  it  again  &  got  me  some  new  togs  (clothes]  &  a  bible 
for  i  made  up  my  mind  after  what  the  Lord  had  done  for  me  i 
would  read  the  bible  every  nite  and  morning,  &  ask  him  to  keep 
an  eye  on  me.  When  I  had  been  there  about  a  week  Mr  Brown 
(that's  his  name)  came  in  my  room  one  nite  &  saw  me  reading 
the  bible — he  asked  me  if  i  was  a  Christian  &  i  told  him  no — he 
asked  me  how  it  was  i  read  the  bible  instead  of  papers  &  books 
— Well  Charlie  i  thought  i  had  better  give  him  a  square  deal  in 
the  start,  so  i  told  him  all  about  my  being  in  prison  &  about 
you,  &  how  i  had  almost  done  give  up  looking  for  work  &  how 
the  Lord  got  me  the  job  when  i  asked  him;  &  the  only  way  i 
had  to  pay  him  back  was  to  read  the  bible  &  square  it,  &  i  asked 
him  to  give  me  a  chance  for  3  months — he  talked  to  me  like  a 
father  for  a  long  time,  &  told  me  i  could  stay  &  then  i  felt  better 
than  ever  i  had  done  in  my  life,  for  i  had  given  Mr.  Brown  a 
fair  start  with  me  &  now  i  didn't  fear  no  one  giving  me  a  back 
cap  (exposing  his  past  life)  &  running  me  off  the  job — the  next 
morning  he  called  me  into  the  library  &  gave  me  another  square 
talk,  &  advised  me  to  study  some  every  day,  &  he  would  help 
me  one  or  2  hours  every  nite,  &  he  gave  me  a  Arithmetic,  a 
spelling  book,  a  Geography  &  and  a  writing  book,  &  he  hers  me 
every  nite — he  lets  me  come  into  the  house  to  prayers  every 
morning,  &  got  me  put  in  a  bible  class  in  the  Sunday  School  which 
i  likes  very  much  for  it  helps  me  to  understand  my  bible  better. 
"  Now,  Charlie  the  3  months  on  the  square  are  up  2  months 
ago,  &  as  you  said,  it  is  the  best  job  i  ever  did  in  my  life,  &  i 
commenced  another  of  the  same  sort  right  away,  only  it  is  to 
God  helping  me  to  last  a  lifetime  Charlie — i  wrote  this  letter 
to  tell  you  i  do  think  God  has  forgiven  my  sins  &  herd  your 
prayers,  for  you  told  me  you  should  pray  for  me — i  no  i  love 
to  read  his  word  &  tell  him  all  my  troubles  &  he  helps  me  i  know 
for  i  have  plenty  of  chances  to  steal  but  i  don't  feel  to  as  i  once 
did  &  now  i  take  more  pleasure  in  going  to  church  than  to  the 
theatre  &  that  wasn't  so  once — our  ministers  and  others  often 
talk  with  me  &  a  month  ago  they  wanted  me  to  join  the  church, 
but  i  said  no,  not  now,  i  may  be  mistaken  in  my  feelings,  i  will 
wait  awhile,  but  now  i  feel  that  God  has  called  me  &  on  the 
first  Sunday  in  July  i  will  join  the  church — dear  friend  i  wish 
i  could  write  to  you  as  i  feel,  but  i  cant  do  it  yet — you  no  i 
learned  to  read  and  write  while  in  prisons  &  i  aint  got  well 
418 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

enough  along  to  write  as  i  would  talk;  i  no  i  aint  spelled  all  the 
words  rite  in  this  &  lots  of  other  mistakes  but  you  will  excuse 
it  i  no,  for  you  no  i  was  brought  up  in  a  poor  house  until  i  run 
away,  &  that  i  never  new  who  my  father  and  mother  was  &  i 
don't  no  my  rite  name,  &  i  hope  you  wont  be  mad  at  me,  but 
i  have  as  much  rite  to  one  name  as  another  &  i  have  taken 
your  name,  for  you  wont  use  it  when  you  get  out  i  no,  &  you 
are  the  man  i  think  most  of  in  the  world;  so  i  hope  you  wont 
be  mad — I  am  doing  well,  i  put  $10  a  month  in  bank  with  $25 
of  the  $50 — if  you  ever  want  any  or  all  of  it  let  me  know,  &  it  is 
yours,  i  wish  you  would  let  me  send  you  some  now.  I  send 
you  with  this  a  receipt  for  a  year  of  Littles  Living  Age,  i  didn't 
now  what  you  would  like  &  i  told  Mr  Brown  &  he  said  he 
thought  you  would  like  it — i  wish  i  was  nere  you  so  i  could  send 
you  chuck  (refreshments)  on  holidays;  it  would  spoil  this  weather 
from  here,  but  i  will  send  you  a  box  next  thanksgiving  any  way 
— next  week  Mr.  Brown  takes  me  into  his  store  as  lite  porter  & 
will  advance  me  as  soon  as  i  know  a  little  more — he  keeps  a 
big  granary  store,  wholesale — i  forgot  to  tell  you  of  my  mission 
school,  Sunday  school  class — the  school  is  in  the  Sunday  after- 
noon, i  went  out  two  Sunday  afternoons,  and  picked  up  seven 
kids  (little  boys)  &  got  them  to  come  in.  Two  of  them  new  as 
much  as  i  did  &  i  had  them  put  in  a  class  where  they  could  learn 
something,  i  don't  no  much  myself,  but  as  these  kids  cant 
read  i  get  on  nicely  with  them,  i  make  sure  of  them  by  going 
after  them  every  Sunday  >£  hour  before  school  time,  i  also  got 
4  girls  to  come,  tell  Mack  and  Harry  about  me,  if  they  will 
come  out  here  when  their  time  is  up  i  will  get  them  jobs  at  once. 
i  hope  you  will  excuse  this  long  letter  &  all  mistakes,  i  wish  i 
could  see  you  for  i  cant  write  as  i  would  talk — i  hope  the  warm 
weather  is  doing  your  lungs  good — i  was  afraid  when  you  was 
bleeding  you  would  die — give  my  respects  to  all  the  boys  and  tell 
them  how  i  am  doing — i  am  doing  well  and  every  one  here  treats 
me  as  kind  as  they  can — Mr  Brown  is  going  to  write  to  you 
sometime — i  hope  some  day  you  will  write  to  me,  this  letter  is 

from  your  very  true  friend  C W 

who  you  know  as  Jack  Hunt. 
"  I  send  you  Mr  Brown's  card.     Send  my  letter  to  him." 

Here  was  true  eloquence;  irresistible  eloquence; 
and  without  a  single  grace  or  ornament  to  help  it 
419 


MARK     TWAIN 

out.  I  have  seldom  been  so  deeply  stirred  by  any 
piece  of  writing.  The  reader  of  it  halted,  all  the 
way  through,  on  a  lame  and  broken  voice;  yet  he 
had  tried  to  fortify  his  feelings  by  several  private 
readings  of  the  letter  before  venturing  into  company 
with  it.  He  was  practising  upon  me  to  see  if  there 
was  any  hope  of  his  being  able  to  read  the  document 
to  his  prayer-meeting  with  anything  like  a  decent 
command  over  his  feelings.  The  result  was  not 
promising.  However,  he  determined  to  risk  it;  and 
did.  He  got  through  tolerably  well;  but  his  audi- 
ence broke  down  early,  and  stayed  in  that  condition 
to  the  end. 

The  fame  of  the  letter  spread  through  the  town. 
A  brother  minister  came  and  borrowed  the  manu- 
script, put  it  bodily  into  a  sermon,  preached  the 
sermon  to  twelve  hundred  people  on  a  Sunday  morn- 
ing, and  the  letter  drowned  them  in  their  own  tears. 
Then  my  friend  put  it  into  a  sermon  and  went  before 
his  Sunday  morning  congregation  with  it.  It  scored 
another  triumph.  The  house  wept  as  one  individual. 

My  friend  went  on  summer  vacation  up  into  the 
fishing  regions  of  our  northern  British  neighbors,  and 
carried  this  sermon  with  him,  since  he  might  possibly 
chance  to  need  a  sermon.  He  was  asked  to  preach 
one  day.  The  little  church  was  full.  Among  the 
people  present  were  the  late  Dr.  J.  G.  Holland,  the 
late  Mr.  Seymour  of  the  New  York  Times,  Mr.  Page, 
the  philanthropist  and  temperance  advocate,  and,  I 
think,  Senator  Frye  of  Maine.  The  marvelous  letter 
did  its  wonted  work;  all  the  people  were  moved,  all 
the  people  wept ;  the  tears  flowed  in  a  steady  stream 
420 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

down  Dr.  Holland's  cheeks,  and  nearly  the  same  can 
e  said  with  regard  to  all  who  were  there.  Mr.  Page 
was  so  full  of  enthusiasm  over  the  letter  that  he 
said  he  would  not  rest  until  he  made  pilgrimage  to 
that  prison,  and  had  speech  with  the  man  who  had 
been  able  to  inspire  a  fellow-unfortunate  to  write  so 
priceless  a  tract. 

Ah,  that  unlucky  Page! — and  another  man.  If 
they  had  only  been  in  Jericho,  that  letter  would  have 
rung  through  the  world  and  stirred  all  the  hearts  of 
all  the  nations  for  a  thousand  years  to  come,  and 
nobody  might  ever  have  found  out  that  it  was  the 
confoundedest,  brazenest,  ingeniousest  piece  of  fraud 
and  humbuggery  that  was  ever  concocted  to  fool 
poor  confiding  mortals  with! 

The  letter  was  a  pure  swindle,  and  that  is  the 
truth.  And  take  it  by  and  large,  it  was  without  a 
compeer  among  swindles.  It  was  perfect,  it  was 
rounded,  symmetrical,  complete,  colossal! 

The  reader  learns  it  at  this  point;  but  we  didn't 
learn  it  till  some  miles  and  weeks  beyond  this  stage 
of  the  affair.  My  friend  came  back  from  the  woods, 
and  he  and  other  clergymen  and  lay  missionaries 
began  once  more  to  inundate  audiences  with  their 
tears  and  the  tears  of  said  audiences;  I  begged  hard 
for  permission  to  print  the  letter  in  a  magazine  and 
tell  the  watery  story  of  its  triumphs;  numbers  of 
people  got  copies  of  the  letter,  with  permission  to 
circulate  them  in  writing,  but  not  in  print;  copies 
were  sent  to  the  Sandwich  Islands  and  other  far 
regions. 

Charles  Dudley  Warner  was  at  church,  one  day, 
421 


MARK    TWAIN 

when  the  worn  letter  was  read  and  wept  oven.  At 
the  church  door,  afterward,  he  dropped  a  peculiarly 
cold  iceberg  down  the  clergyman's  back  with  the 
question : 

"Do  you  know  that  letter  to  be  genuine?" 

It  was  the  first  suspicion  that  had  ever  been  voiced ; 
but  it  had  that  sickening  effect  which  first-uttered 
suspicions  against  one's  idol  always  have.  Some  talk 
followed: 

"Why — what  should  make  you  suspect  that  it 
isn't  genuine?" 

"Nothing  that  I  know  of,  except  that  it  is  too 
neat,  and  compact,  and  fluent,  and  nicely  put  to- 
gether for  an  ignorant  person,  an  unpractised  hand. 
I  think  it  was  done  by  an  educated  man." 

The  literary  artist  had  detected  the  literary  ma- 
chinery. If  you  will  look  at  the  letter  now,  you  will 
detect  it  yourself — it  is  observable  in  every  line. 

Straightway  the  clergyman  went  off,  with  this  seed 
of  suspicion  sprouting  in  him,  and  wrote  to  a  min- 
ister residing  in  that  town  where  Williams  had  been 
jailed  and  converted ;  asked  for  light ;  and  also  asked 
if  a  person  in  the  literary  line  (meaning  me)  might  be 
allowed  to  print  the  letter  and  tell  its  history.  He 
presently  received  this  answer: 

REV. . 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND:  In  regard  to  that  "convict's  letter"  there 
can  be  no  doubt  as  to  its  genuineness.  "Williams,"  to  whom  it 
was  written,  lay  in  our  jail  and  professed  to  have  been  converted, 
and  Rev.  Mr. ,  the  chaplain,  had  great  faith  in  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  change — as  much  as  one  can  have  in  any  such  case. 

The  letter  was  sent  to  one  of  our  ladies,  who  is  a  Sunday- 
school  teacher— sent  either  by  Williams  himself,  or  the  chaplain 
422 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

of  the  state's  prison,  probably.  She  has  been  greatly  annoyed 
in  having  so  much  publicity,  lest  it  might  seem  a  breach  of 
confidence,  or  be  an  injury  to  Williams.  In  regard  to  its  pub- 
lication, I  can  give  no  permission;  though,  if  the  names  and 
places  were  omitted,  and  especially  if  sent  out  of  the  country, 
I  think  you  might  take  the  responsibility  and  do  it. 

It  is  a  wonderful  letter,  which  no  Christian  genius,  much  less 
one  unsanctified,  could  ever  have  written.  As  showing  the 
work  of  grace  in  a  human  heart,  and  in  a  very  degraded  and 
wicked  one,  it  proves  its  own  origin  and  reproves  our  weak 
faith  in  its  power  to  cope  with  any  form  of  wickedness. 

"Mr.  Brown"  of  St.  Louis,  some  one  said,  was  a  Hartford  man. 
Do  all  whom  you  send  from  Hartford  serve  their  Master  as  well? 

P.  S. — Williams  is  still  in  the  state's  prison,  serving  out  a  long 
sentence — of  nine  years,  I  think.  He  has  been  sick  and  threat- 
ened with  consumption,  but  I  have  not  inquired  after  him 
lately.  This  lady  that  I  speak  of  corresponds  with  him,  I  pre- 
sume, and  will  be  quite  sure  to  look  after  him. 


This  letter  arrived  a  few  days  after  it  was  written 
— and  up  went  Mr.  Williams's  stock  again.  Mr. 
Warner's  low-down  suspicion  was  laid  in  the  cold, 
cold  grave,  where  it  apparently  belonged.  It  was  a 
suspicion  based  upon  mere  internal  evidence,  any- 
way; and  when  you  come  to  internal  evidence,  it's 
a  big  field  and  a  game  that  two  can  play  at:  as 
witness  this  other  internal  evidence,  discovered  by 
the  writer  of  the  note  above  quoted,  that  "it  is  a 
wonderful  letter — which  no  Christian  genius,  much 
less  one  unsanctified,  could  ever  have  written." 

I  had  permission  now  to  print — provided  I  sup- 
pressed names  and  places  and  sent  my  narrative  out 
of  the  country.  So  I  chose  an  Australian  magazine 
for  vehicle,  as  being  far  enough  out  of  the  country, 
and  set  myself  to  work  on  my  article.  And  the 
423 


MARK     TWAIN 

ministers  set  the  pumps  going  again,  with  the  letter 
to  work  the  handles. 

But  meantime  Brother  Page  had  been  agitating. 
He  had  not  visited  the  penitentiary,  but  he  had  sent 
a  copy  of  the  illustrious  letter  to  the  chaplain  of  that 
institution,  and  accompanied  it  with — apparently — 
inquiries.  He  got  an  answer,  dated  four  days  later 
than  that  other  brother's  reassuring  epistle;  and 
before  my  article  was  complete,  it  wandered  into 
my  hands.  The  original  is  before  me  now,  and  I 
here  append  it.  It  is  pretty  well  loaded  with  in- 
ternal evidence  of  the  most  solid  description: 

STATE'S  PRISON,  CHAPLAIN'S  OFFICE,  July  n,  1873. 
DEAR  BRO.  PAGE: 

Herewith  please  find  the  letter  kindly  loaned  me.  I  am  afraid 
its  genuineness  cannot  be  established.  It  purports  to  be  ad- 
dressed to  some  prisoner  here.  No  such  letter  ever  came  to  a 
prisoner  here.  All  letters  received  are  carefully  read  by  officers 
of  the  prison  before  they  go  into  the  hands  of  the  convicts,  and 
any  such  letter  could  not  be  forgotten.  Again,  Charles  Williams 
is  not  a  Christian  man,  but  a  dissolute,  cunning  prodigal,  whose 
father  is  a  minister  of  the  gospel.  His  name  is  an  assumed  one. 
I  am  glad  to  have  made  your  acquaintance.  I  am  preparing  a 
lecture  upon  life  seen  through  prison  bars,  and  should  like  to 
deliver  the  same  in  your  vicinity. 

And  so  ended  that  little  drama.  My  poor  article 
went  into  the  fire;  for  whereas  the  materials  for  it 
were  now  more  abundant  and  infinitely  richer  than 
they  had  previously  been,  there  were  parties  all 
around  me  who,  although  longing  for  the  publication 
before,  were  a  unit  for  suppression  at  this  stage  and 
complexion  of  the  game.  They  said,  "Wait — the 
wound  is  too  fresh,  yet."  All  the  copies  of  the 
424 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

famous  letter,  except  mine,  disappeared  suddenly; 
and  from  that  time  onward,  the  aforetime  same  old 
drought  set  in,  in  the  churches.  As  a  rule,  the  town 
was  on  a  spacious  grin  for  a  while,  but  there  were 
places  in  it  where  the  grin  did  not  appear,  and 
where  it  was  dangerous  to  refer  to  the  ex-convict's 
letter. 

A  word  of  explanation:  "Jack  Hunt,"  the  pro- 
fessed writer  of  the  letter,  was  an  imaginary  person. 
The  burglar  Williams — Harvard  graduate,  son  of  a 
minister — wrote  the  letter  himself,  to  himself:  got  it 
smuggled  out  of  the  prison;  got  it  conveyed  to  per- 
sons who  had  supported  and  encouraged  him  in  his 
conversion — where  he  knew  two  things  would  hap- 
pen: the  genuineness  of  the  letter  would  not  be 
doubted  or  inquired  into;  and  the  nub  of  it  would 
be  noticed,  and  would  have  valuable  effect — the 
effect,  indeed,  of  starting  a  movement  to  get  Mr. 
Williams  pardoned  out  of  prison. 
•  That  "nub"  is  so  ingeniously,  so  casually,  flung 
in,  and  immediately  left  there  in  the  tail  of  the 
letter,  undwelt  upon,  that  an  indifferent  reader 
would  never  suspect  that  it  was  the  heart  and  core 
of  the  epistle,  if  he  even  took  note  of  it  at  all.  This 
is  the  "nub": 

i  hope  the  warm  weather  is  doing  your  lungs  good — i  was 
afraid  when  you  was  bleeding  you  would  die — give  my  respects,  etc. 

That  is  all  there  is  of  it — simply  touch  and  go — 

no  dwelling  upon  it.     Nevertheless  it  was  intended 

for  an  eye  that  would  be  swift  to  see  it ;  and  it  was 

meant  to  move  a  kind  heart  to  try  to  effect  the 

425 


MARK    TWAIN 

liberation  of  a  poor  reformed  and  purified  fellow 
lying  in  the  fell  grip  of  consumption. 

When  I  for  the  first  time  heard  that  letter  read, 
nine  years  ago,  I  felt  that  it  was  the  most  remarkable 
one  I  had  ever  encountered.  And  it  so  warmed  me 
toward  Mr.  Brown  of  St.  Louis  that  I  said  that  if 
ever  I  visited  that  city  again,  I  would  seek  out  that 
excellent  man  and  kiss  the  hem  of  his  garment,  if 
it  was  a  new  one.  Well,  I  visited  St.  Louis,  but  I 
did  not  hunt  for  Mr.  Brown ;  for  alas !  the  investiga- 
tions of  long  ago  had  proved  that  the  benevolent 
Brown,  like  "Jack  Hunt,"  was  not  a  real  person, 
but  a  sheer  invention  of  that  gifted  rascal,  Williams 
"  'burglar,  Harvard  graduate,  son  of  a  clergyman. 


CHAPTER  LIII 

MY   BOYHOOD   HOME 

WE  took  passage  in  one  of  the  fast  boats  of  the 
St.  Lotus  and  St.  Paul  Packet  Company,  and 
started  up  the  river. 

When  I,  as  a  boy,  first  saw  the  mouth  of  the 
Missouri  River,  it  was  twenty-two  or  twenty-three 
miles  above  St.  Louis,  according  to  the  estimate  of 
pilots;  the  wear  and  tear  of  the  banks  has  moved 
it  down  eight  miles  since  then;  and  the  pilots  say 
that  within  five  years  the  river  will  cut  through  and 
move  the  mouth  down  five  miles  more,  which  will 
bring  it  within  ten  miles  of  St.  Louis. 

About  nightfall  we  passed  the  large  and  flourishing 
town  of  Alton,  Illinois,  and  before  daylight  next 
morning  the  town  of  Louisiana,  Missouri,  a  sleepy 
village  in  my  day,  but  a  brisk  railway -center  now; 
however,  all  the  towns  out  there  are  railway-centers 
now.  I  could  not  clearly  recognize  the  place.  This 
seemed  odd  to  me,  for  when  I  retired  from  the  rebel 
army  in  '61  I  retired  upon  Louisiana  in  good  order; 
at  least  in  good  enough  order  for  a  person  who  had 
not  yet  learned  how  to  retreat  according  to  the  rules 
of  war,  and  had  to  trust  to  native  genius.  It  seemed 
to  me  that  for  a  first  attempt  at  a  retreat  it  was 
427 


MARK     TWAIN 

not  badly  done.  I  had  done  no  advancing  in  all 
that  campaign  that  was  at  all  equal  to  it. 

There  was  a  railway  bridge  across  the  river  here 
well  sprinkled  with  glowing  lights,  and  a  very  beauti- 
ful sight  it  was. 

At  seven  in  the  morning  we  reached  Hannibal, 
Missouri,  where  my  boyhood  was  spent.  I  had  had 
a  glimpse  of  it  fifteen  years  ago,  and  another  glimpse 
six  years  earlier,  but  both  were  so  brief  that  they 
hardly  counted.  The  only  notion  of  the  town  that 
remained  in  my  mind  was  the  memory  of  it  as  I 
had  known .  it  when  I  first  quitted  it  twenty-nine 
years  ago.  That  picture  of  it  was  still  as  clear  and 
vivid  to  me  as  a  photograph.  I  stepped  ashore  with 
the  feeling  of  one  who  returns  out  of  a  dead-and-gone 
generation.  I  had  a  sort  of  realizing  sense  of  what 
the  Bastille  prisoners  must  have  felt  when  they  used 
to  come  out  and  look  upon  Paris  after  years  of 
captivity,  and  note  how  curiously  the  familiar  and 
the  strange  were  mixed  together  before  them.  I 
saw  the  new  houses — saw  them  plainly  enough — but 
they  did  not  affect  the  older  picture  in  my  mind, 
for  through  their  solid  bricks  and  mortar  I  saw  the 
vanished  houses,  which  had  formerly  stood  there, 
with  perfect  distinctness. 

It  was  Sunday  morning,  and  everybody  was  abed 
yet.  So  I  passed  through  the  vacant  streets,  still 
seeing  the  town  as  it  was,  and  not  as  it  is,  and 
recognizing  and  metaphorically  shaking  hands  with 
a  hundred  familiar  objects  which  no  longer  exist ;  and 
finally  climbed  Holiday's  Hill  to  get  a  comprehensive 
view.  The  whole  town  lay  spread  out  below  me 
428 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

then,  and  I  could  mark  and  fix  every  locality,  every 
detail.  Naturally,  I  was  a  good  deal  moved.  I 
said,  "Many  of  the  people  I  once  knew  in  this 
tranquil  refuge  of  my  childhood  are  now  in  heaven; 
some,  I  trust,  are  in  the  other  place." 

The  things  about  me  and  before  me  made  me  feel 
like  a  boy  again — convinced  me  that  I  was  a  boy 
again,  and  that  I  had  simply  been  dreaming  an  un- 
usually long  dream;  but  my  reflections  spoiled  all 
that;  for  they  forced  me  to  say,  "I  see  fifty  old 
houses  down  yonder,  into  each  of  which  I  could  enter 
and  find  either  a  man  or  a  woman  who  was  a  baby  or 
unborn  when  I  noticed  those  houses  last,  or  a  grand- 
mother who  was  a  plump  young  bride  at  that  time." 

From  this  vantage-ground  the  extensive  view  up 
and  down  the  river,  and  wide  over  the  wooded  ex- 
panses of  Illinois,  is  very  beautiful — one  of  the  most 
beautiful  on  the  Mississippi,  I  think;  which  is  a 
hazardous  remark  to  make,  for  the  eight  hundred 
miles  of  river  between  St.  Louis  and  St.  Paul  afford 
an  unbroken  succession  of  lovely  pictures..  It  may 
be  that  my  affection  for  the  one  in  question  biases 
my  judgment  in  its  favor;  I  cannot  say  as  to  that. 
No  matter,  it  was  satisfyingly  beautiful  to  me,  and 
it  had  this  advantage  over  all  the  other  friends 
whom  I  was  about  to  greet  again:  it  had  suffered  no 
change;  it  was  as  young  and  fresh  and  comely  and 
gracious  as  ever  it  had  been;  whereas,  the  faces  of 
the  others  would  be  old,  and  scarred  with  the  cam- 
paigns of  life,  and  marked  with  their  griefs  and 
defeats,  and  would  give  me  no  upliftings  of  spirit. 

An  old  gentleman,  out  on  an  early  morning  walk, 
429 


MARK     TWAIN 

came  along,  and  we  discussed  the  weather,  and  then 
drifted  into  other  matters.  I  could  not  remember 
his  face.  He  said  he  had  been  living  here  twenty- 
eight  years.  So  he  had  come  after  my  time,  and  I 
had  never  seen  him  before.  I  asked  him  various 
questions;  first  about  a  mate  of  mine  in  Sunday- 
school — what  became  of  him? 

"He  graduated  with  honor  in  an  Eastern  college, 
wandered  off  into  the  world  somewhere,  succeeded 
at  nothing,  passed  out  of  knowledge  and  memory 
years  ago,  and  is  supposed  to  have  gone  to  the  dogs." 

"He  was  bright,  and  promised  well  when  he  was 
a  boy." 

"Yes,  but  the  thing  that  happened  is  what  became 
of  it  all." 

I  asked  after  another  lad,  altogether  the  brightest 
in  our  village  school  when  I  was  a  boy. 

"He,  too,  was  graduated  with  honors,  from  an 
Eastern  college;  but  life  whipped  him  in  every  battle, 
straight  along,  and  he  died  in  one  of  the  territories, 
years  ago,  a  defeated  man." 

I  asked  after  another  of  the  bright  boys. 

"He  is  a  success,  always  has  been,  always  will  be, 
I  think." 

I  inquired  after  a  young  fellow  who  came  to  the 
town  to  study  for  one  of  the  professions  when  I 
was  a  boy. 

"He  went  at  something  else  before  he  got  through 
— went  from  medicine  to  law,  or  from  law  to  medi- 
cine— then  to  some  other  new  thing;  went  away  for 
a  year,  came  back  with  a  young  wife;  fell  to  drink- 
ing, then  to  gambling  behind  the  door;  finally  took 
430 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

his  wife  and  two  children  to  her  father's,  and  went 
off  to  Mexico;  went  from  bad  to  worse,  and  finally 
died  there,  without  a  cent  to  buy  a  shroud,  and 
without  a  friend  to  attend  the  funeral." 

"Pity,  for  he  was  the  best-natured  and  most 
cheery  and  hopeful  young  fellow  that  ever  was." 

I  named  another  boy. 

"Oh,  he  is  all  right.  Lives  here  yet;  has  a  wife 
and  children,  and  is  prospering." 

Same  verdict  concerning  other  boys. 

I  named  three  school-girls. 

"The  first  two  live  here,  are  married  and  have  chil- 
dren; the  other  is  long  ago  dead — never  married." 

I  named,  with  emotion,  one  of  my  early  sweethearts. 

"She  is  all  right.  Been  married  three  times; 
buried  two  husbands,  divorced  from  the  third,  and 
I  hear  she  is  getting  ready  to  marry  an  old  fellow 
out  in  Colorado  somewhere.  She's  got  children  scat- 
tered around  here  and  there,  most  every wheres." 

The  answer  to  several  other  inquiries  was  brief 
and  simple : 

"Killed  in  the  war." 

I  named  another  boy. 

"Well  now,  his  case  is  curious!  There  wasn't  a 
human  being  in  this  town  but  knew  that  that  boy 
was  a  perfect  chucklehead;  perfect  dummy;  just  a 
stupid  ass,  as  you  may  say.  Everybody  knew  it,  and 
everybody  said  it.  Well,  if  that  very  boy  isn't  the 
first  lawyer  in  the  state  of  Missouri  to-day,  I'm  a 
Democrat!" 

"Is  that  so?" 

"It's  actually  so.     I'm  telling  you  the  truth." 
431 


MARK     TWAIN 

"How  do  you  account  for  it?" 

"Account  for  it?    There  ain't  any  accounting  for 

it,  except  that  if  you  send  a  d d  fool  to  St. 

Louis,  and  you  don't  tell  them  he's  a  d d  fool, 

they'll  never  find  it  out.     There's  one  thing  sure — if 

I  had  a  d d  fool  I  should  know  what  to  do  with 

him:  ship  him  to  St.  Louis — it's  the  noblest  market 
in  the  world  for  that  kind  of  property.  Well,  when 
you  come  to  look  at  it  all  around,  and  chew  at  it 
and  think  it  over,  don't  it  just  bang  anything  you 
ever  heard  of?" 

"Well,  yes;  it  does  seem  to.  But  don't  you  think 
maybe  it  was  the  Hannibal  people  who  were  mistaken 
about  the  boy,  and  not  the  St.  Louis  people?" 

' '  Oh,  nonsense !  The  people  here  have  known  him 
from  the  very  cradle — they  knew  him  a  hundred 
times  better  than  the  St.  Louis  idiots  could  have 

known  him.     No;  if  you  have  got  any  d d  fools 

that  you  want  to  realize  on,  take  my  advice — send 
them  to  St.  Louis." 

I  mentioned  a  great  number  of  people  whom  I  had 
formerly  known.  Some  were  dead,  some  were  gone 
away,  some  had  prospered,  some  had  come  to  naught ; 
but  as  regarded  a  dozen  or  so  of  the  lot,  the  answer 
was  comforting: 

"Prosperous — live  here  yet — town  littered  with 
their  children." 

I  asked  about  Miss . 

"Died  in  the  insane  asylum  three  or  four  years 
ago — never  was  out  of  it  from  the  time  she  went  in ; 
and  was  always  suffering  too;  never  got  a  shred  of 
her  mind  back." 

432 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

If  he  spoke  the  truth,  here  was  a  heavy  tragedy, 
indeed.  Thirty-six  years  in  a  madhouse,  that  some 
young  fools  might  have  some  fun!  I  was  a  small 
boy  at  the  time ;  and  I  saw  those  giddy  young  ladies 

come  tiptoeing  into  the  room  where  Miss sat 

reading  at  midnight  by  a  lamp.  The  girl  at  the  head 
of  the  file  wore  a  shroud  and  a  doughface;  she  crept 
behind  the  victim,  touched  her  on  the  shoulder,  and 
she  looked  up  and  screamed,  and  then  fell  into  con- 
vulsions. She  did  not  recover  from  the  fright,  but 
went  mad.  In  these  days  it  seems  incredible  that 
people  believed  in  ghosts  so  short  a  time  ago.  But 
they  did. 

After  asking  after  such  other  folk  as  I  could  call 
to  mind,  I  finally  inquired  about  myself. 

"Oh,  he  succeeded  well  enough — another  case  of 

d d  fool.  If  they'd  sent  him  to  St.  Louis,  he'd 

have  succeeded  sooner." 

It  was  with  much  satisfaction  that  I  recognized 
the  wisdom  of  having  told  this  candid  gentleman,  in 
the  beginning,  that  my  name  was  Smith. 


CHAPTER  LIV 

PAST   AND   PRESENT 

BEING  left  to  myself,  up  there,  I  went  on  picking 
out  old  houses  in  the  distant  town,  and  calling 
back  their  former  inmates  out  of  the  moldy  past. 
Among  them  I  presently  recognized  the  house  of  the 
father  of  Lem  Hackett  (fictitious  name).  It  carried 
me  back  more  than  a  generation  in  a  moment,  and 
landed  me  in  the  midst  of  a  time  when  the  happenings 
of  life  were  not  the  natural  and  logical  results  of 
great  general  laws,  but  of  special  orders,  and  were 
freighted  with  very  precise  and  distinct  purposes — 
partly  punitive  in  intent,  partly  admonitory;  and 
usually  local  in  application. 

When  I  was  a  small  boy,  Lem  Hackett  was 
drowned — on  a  Sunday.  He  fell  out  of  an  empty 
flatboat,  where  he  was  playing.  Being  loaded  with 
sin,  he  went  to  the  bottom  like  an  anvil.  He  was 
the  only  boy  in  the  village  who  slept  that  night. 
We  others  all  lay  awake,  repenting.  We  had  not 
needed  the  information,  delivered  from  the  pulpit 
that  evening,  that  Lem's  was  a  case  of  special 
judgment — we  knew  that,  already.  There  was  a 
ferocious  thunder-storm  that  night,  and  it  raged 
continuously  until  near  dawn.  The  wind  blew,  the 
windows  rattled,  the  rain  swept  along  the  roof  in 
434 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

pelting  sheets,  and  at  the  briefest  of  intervals  the 
inky  blackness  of  the  night  vanished,  the  houses 
over  the  way  glared  out  white  and  blinding  for  a 
quivering  instant,  then  the  solid  darkness  shut  down 
again  and  a  splitting  peal  of  thunder  followed  which 
seemed  to  rend  everything  in  the  neighborhood  to 
shreds  and  splinters.  I  sat  up  in  bed  quaking  and 
shuddering,  waiting  for  the  destruction  of  the  world, 
and  expecting  it.  To  me  there  was  nothing  strange 
or  incongruous  in  Heaven's  making  such  an  uproar 
about  Lem  Hackett.  Apparently  it  was  the  right 
and  proper  thing  to  do.  Not  a  doubt  entered  my 
mind  that  all  the  angels  were  grouped  together, 
discussing  this  boy's  case  and  observing  the  awful 
bombardment  of  our  beggarly  little  village  with 
satisfaction  and  approval.  There  was  one  thing 
which  disturbed  me  in  the  most  serious  way:  that 
was  the  thought  that  this  centering  of  the  celestial 
interest  on  our  village  could  not  fail  to  attract  the 
attention  of  the  observers  to  people  among  us  who 
might  otherwise  have  escaped  notice  for  years.'  I 
felt  that  I  was  not  only  one  of  those  people,  but  the 
very  one  most  likely  to  be  discovered.  That  dis- 
covery could  have  but  one  result :  I  should  be  in  the 
fire  with  Lem  before  the  chill  of  the  river  had  been 
fairly  warmed  out  of  him.  I  knew  that  this  would 
be  only  just  and  fair.  I  was  increasing  the  chances 
against  myself  all  the  time,  by  feeling  a  secret  bitter- 
ness against  Lem  for  having  attracted  this  fatal 
attention  to  me,  but  I  could  not  help  it— this  sinful 
thought  persisted  in  infesting  my  breast  in  spite  of 
me.  Every  time  the  lightning  glared  T  caught  my 
435 


MARK     TWAIN 

breath,  and  judged  I  was  gone.  In  my  terror  and 
misery  I  meanly  began  to  suggest  other  boys,  and 
mention  acts  of  theirs  which  were  wickeder  than 
mine,  and  peculiarly  needed  punishment — and  I  tried 
to  pretend  to  myself  that  I  was  simply  doing  this 
in  a  casual  way,  and  without  intent  to  divert  the 
heavenly  attention  to  them  for  the  purpose  of 
getting  rid  of  it  myself.  With  deep  sagacity  I  put 
these  mentions  into  the  form  of  sorrowing  recollec- 
tions and  left-handed  sham-supplications  that  the 
sins  of  those  boys  might  be  allowed  to  pass  unnoticed 
—"Possibly  they  may  repent."  "It  is  true  that 
Jim  Smith  broke  a  window  and  lied  about  it — but 
maybe  he  did  not  mean  any  harm.  And  although 
Tom  Holmes  says  more  bad  words  than  any  other 
boy  in  the  village,  he  probably  intends  to  repent — 
though  he  has  never  said  he  would.  And  while  it 
is  a  fact  that  John  Jones  did  fish  a  little  on  Sunday, 
once,  he  didn't  really  catch  anything  but  only  just 
one  small  useless  mudcat;  and  maybe  that  wouldn't 
have  been  so  awful  if  he  had  thrown  it  back — as  he 
says  he  did,  but  he  didn't.  Pity  but  they  would 
repent  of  these  dreadful  things — and  maybe  they 
will  yet." 

But  while  I  was  shamefully  trying  to  draw  atten- 
tion to  these  poor  chaps — who  were  doubtless  di- 
recting the  celestial  attention  to  me  at  the  same 
moment,  though  I  never  once  suspected  that — I  had 
heedlessly  left  my  candle  burning.  It  was  not  a  time 
to  neglect  even  trifling  precautions.  There  was  no 
occasion  to  add  anything  to  the  facilities  for  attract- 
ing notice  to  me — so  I  put,  the  light  out. 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

It  was  a  long  night  to  me,  and  perhaps  the  most 
distressful  one  I  ever  spent.  I  endured  agonies  of 
remorse  for  sins  which  I  knew  I  had  committed,  and 
for  others  which  I  was  not  certain  about,  yet  was 
sure  that  they  had  been  set  down  against  me  in  a 
book  by  an  angel  who  was  wiser  than  I  and  did  not 
trust  such  important  matters  to  memory.  It  struck 
me,  by  and  by,  that  I  had  been  making  a  most 
foolish  and  calamitous  mistake,  in  one  respect; 
doubtless  I  had  not  only  made  my  own  destruction 
sure  by  directing  attention  to  those  other  boys,  but 
had  already  accomplished  theirs!  Doubtless  the 
lightning  had  stretched  them  all  dead  in  their  beds 
by  this  time !  The  anguish  and  the  fright  which  this 
thought  gave  me  made  my  previous  sufferings  seem 
trifling  by  comparison. 

Things  had  become  truly  serious.  I  resolved  to 
turn  over  a  new  leaf  instantly;  I  also  resolved  to 
connect  myself  with  the  church  next  day,  if  I  sur- 
vived to  see  its  sun  appear.  I  resolved  to  cease 
from  sin  in  all  its  forms,  and  to  lead  a  high  and 
blameless  life  forever  after.  I  would  be  punctual  at 
church  and  Sunday-school;  visit  the  sick;  carry 
baskets  of  victuals  to  the  poor  (simply  to  fulfil  the 
regulation  conditions,  although  I  knew  we  had  none 
among  us  so  poor  but  they  would  smash  the  basket 
over  my  head  for  my  pains) ;  I  would  instruct  other 
boys  in  right  ways,  and  take  the  resulting  trouncings 
meekly;  I  would  subsist  entirely  on  tracts;  I  would 
invade  the  rum  shop  and  warn  the  drunkard — and 
finally,  if  I  escaped  the  fate  of  those  who  early  be- 
come too  good  to  live,  I  would  go  for  a  missionary. 
437 


MARK     TWAIN 

The  storm  subsided  toward  daybreak,  and  1 
dozed  gradually  to  sleep  with  a  sense  of  obligation 
to  Lena  Hackett  for  going  to  eternal  suffering  in  that 
abrupt  way,  and  thus  preventing  a  far  more  dreadful 
disaster — my  own  loss. 

But  when  I  rose  refreshed,  by  and  by,  and  found 
that  those  other  boys  were  still  alive,  I  had  a  dim 
sense  that  perhaps  the  whole  thing  was  a  false  alarm; 
that  the  entire  turmoil  had  been  on  Lem's  account 
and  nobody's  else.  The  world  looked  so  bright  and 
safe  that  there  did  not  seem  to  be  any  real  occasion 
to  turn  over  a  new  leaf.  I  was  a  little  subdued 
during  that  day,  and  perhaps  the  next;  after  that, 
my  purpose  of  reforming  slowly  dropped  out  of  my 
mind,  and  I  had  a  peaceful,  comfortable  time  again, 
until  the  next  storm. 

That  storm  came  about  three  weeks  later;  and  it 
was  the  most  unaccountable  one,  to  me,  that  I  had 
ever  experienced;  for  on  the  afternoon  of  that  day, 
"Dutchy"  was  drowned.  Dutchy  belonged  to  our 
Sunday-school.  He  was  a  German  lad  who  did  not 
know  enough  to  come  in  out  of  the  rain ;  but  he  was 
exasperatingly  good,  and  had  a  prodigious  memory. 
One  Sunday  he  made  himself  the  envy  of  all  the 
youth  and  the  talk  of  the  admiring  village,  by 
reciting  three  thousand  verses  of  Scripture  without 
missing  a  word:  then  he  went  off  the  very  next  day 
and  got  drowned. 

Circumstances  gave  to  his  death  a  peculiar  im- 

pressiveness.     We   were   all   bathing  in   a   muddy 

creek  which  had  a  deep  hole  in  it,  and  in  this  hole  the 

coopers  had  sunk  a  pile  of  green  hickory  hoop-poles 

438 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

to  soak,  some  twelve  feet  under  water.  We  were 
diving  and  "seeing  who  could  stay  under  longest." 
We  managed  to  remain  down  by  holding  on  to  the 
hoop-poles.  Dutchy  made  such  a  poor  success  of 
it  that  he  was  hailed  with  laughter  and  derision 
every  time  his  head  appeared  above  water.  At  last 
he  seemed  hurt  with  the  taunts,  and  begged  us  to 
stand  still  on  the  bank  and  be  fair  with  him  and 
give  him  an  honest  count — "be  friendly  and  kind 
just  this  once,  and  not  miscount  for  the  sake  of 
having  the  fun  of  laughing  at  him."  Treacherous 
winks  were  exchanged,  and  all  said,  "All  right, 
Dutchy — go  ahead,  we'll  play  fair." 

Dutchy  plunged  in,  but  the  boys,  instead  of 
beginning  to  count,  followed  the  lead  of  one  of  their 
number  and  scampered  to  a  range  of  blackberry 
bushes  close  by  and  hid  behind  it.  They  imagined 
Dutchy's  humiliation,  when  he  should  rise  after  a 
superhuman  effort  and  find  the  place  silent  and 
vacant,  nobody  there  to  applaud.  They  were  "so 
full  of  laugh"  with  the  idea  that  they  were  continu- 
ally exploding  into  muffled  cackles.  Time  swept  on, 
and  presently  one  who  was  peeping  through  the 
briers  said,  with  surprise : 

"Why,  he  hasn't  come  up  yet!" 

The  laughing  stopped. 

"Boys,  it's  a  splendid  dive,"  said  one. 

"Never  mind  that,"  said  another,  "the  joke  on 
him  is  all  the  better  for  it." 

There  was  a  remark  or  two  more,  and  then  a 
pause.  Talking  ceased,  and  all  began  to  peer 
through  the  vines.  Before  long,  the  boys'  faces 
439 


MARK     TWAIN 

began  to  look  uneasy,  then  anxious,  then  terrified. 
Still  there  was  no  movement  of  the  placid  water. 
Hearts  began  to  beat  fast,  and  faces  to  turn  pale. 
We  all  glided  out  silently,  and  stood  on  the  bank, 
our  horrified  eyes  wandering  back  and  forth  from 
each  other's  countenances  to  the  water. 

"Somebody  must  go  down  and  see!" 

Yes,  that  was  plain;  but  nobody  wanted  that 
grisly  task. 

"Draw  straws!" 

So  we  did — with  hands  which  shook  so  that  we 
hardly  knew  what  we  were  about.  The  lot  fell  to 
me,  and  I  went  down.  The  water  was  so  muddy  I 
could  not  see  anything,  but  I  felt  around  among  the 
hoop-poles,  and  presently  grasped  a  limp  wrist  which 
gave  me  no  response — and  if  it  had  I  should  not  have 
known  it,  I  let  it  go  with  such  a  frightened  suddenness. 

The  boy  had  been  caught  among  the  hoop-poles 
and  entangled  there,  helplessly.  I  fled  to  the  sur- 
face and  told  the  awful  news.  Some  of  us  knew  that 
if  the  boy  were  dragged  out  at  once  he  might  possibly 
be  resuscitated,  but  we  never  thought  of  that.  We 
did  not  think  of  anything;  we  did  not  know  what  to 
do,  so  we  did  nothing — except  that  the  smaller  lads 
cried  piteously,  and  we  all  struggled  frantically  into 
our  clothes,  putting  on  anybody's  that  came  handy, 
and  getting  them  wrong  side  out  and  upside  down, 
as  a  rule.  Then  we  scurried  away  and  gave  the 
alarm,  but  none  of  us  went  back  to  see  the  end  of 
the  tragedy.  We  had  a  more  important  thing  to 
attend  to :  we  all  flew  home,  and  lost  not  a  moment 
in  getting  ready  to  lead  a  better  life. 
440 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

The  night  presently  closed  down.  Then  came  on 
that  tremendous  and  utterly  unaccountable  storm. 
I  was  perfectly  dazed;  I  could  not  understand  it.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  there  must  be  some  mistake.  The 
elements  were  turned  loose,  and  they  rattled  and 
banged  and  blazed  away  in  the  most  blind  and  frantic 
manner.  All  heart  and  hope  went  out  of  me,  and 
the  dismal  thought  kept  floating  through  my  brain, 
"If  a  boy  who  knows  three  thousand  verses  by  heart 
is  not  satisfactory,  what  chance  is  there  for  anybody 
else?" 

Of  course  I  never  questioned  for  a  moment  that 
the  storm  was  on  Dutchy's  account,  or  that  he  or 
any  other  inconsequential  animal  was  worthy  of  such 
a  majestic  demonstration  from  on  high;  the  lesson 
of  it  was  the  only  thing  that  troubled  me ;  for  it  con- 
vinced me  that  if  Dutchy,  with  all  his  perfections, 
was  not  a  delight,  it  would  be  vain  for  me  to  turn 
over  a  new  leaf,  for  I  must  infallibly  fall  hopelessly 
short  of  that  boy,  no  matter  how  hard  I  might  try. 
Nevertheless  I  did  turn  it  over — a  highly  educated 
fear  compelled  me  to  do  that — but  succeeding  days 
of  cheerfulness  and  sunshine  came  bothering  around, 
and  within  a  month  I  had  so  drifted  backward  that 
again  I  was  as  lost  and  comfortable  as  ever. 

Breakfast-time  approached  while  I  mused  these 
musings  and  called  these  ancient  happenings  back 
to  mind;  so  I  got  me  back  into  the  present  and 
went  down  the  hill. 

On  my  way  through  town  to  the  hotel,  I  saw  the 
house  which  was  my  home  when  I  was  a  boy.  At 
present  rates,  the  people  who  now  occupy  it  are  of 
441 


MARK    TWAIN 

no  more  value  than  I  am ;  but  in  my  time  they  would 
have  been  worth  not  less  than  five  hundred  dollars 
apiece.  They  are  colored  folk. 

After  breakfast  I  went  out  alone  again,  intending 
to  hunt  up  some  of  the  Sunday-schools  and  see  how 
this  generation  of  pupils  might  compare  with  their 
progenitors  who  had  sat  with  me  in  those  places  and 
had  probably  taken  me  as  a  model — though  I  do  not 
remember  as  to  that  now.  By  the  public  square 
there  had  been  in  my  day  a  shabby  little  brick 
church  called  the  "Old  Ship  of  Zion,"  which  I  had 
attended  as  a  Sunday-school  scholar;  and  I  found  the 
locality  easily  enough,  but  not  the  old  church ;  it  was 
gone,  and  a  trig  and  rather  hilarious  new  edifice  was 
in  its  place.  The  pupils  were  better  dressed  and 
better  looking  than  were  those  of  my  time;  conse- 
quently they  did  not  resemble  their  ancestors;  and 
consequently  there  was  nothing  familiar  to  me  in 
their  faces.  Still,  I  contemplated  them  with  a  deep 
interest  and  a  yearning  wistfulness,  and  if  I  had  been 
a  girl  I  would  have  cried ;  for  they  were  the  offspring, 
and  represented,  and  occupied  the  places,  of  boys 
and  girls  some  of  whom  I  had  loved  to  love,  and 
some  of  whom  I  had  loved  to  hate,  but  all  of  whom 
were  dear  to  me  for  the  one  reason  or  the  other,  so 
many  years  gone  by  —  and,  Lord,  where  be  they 
nowi 

I  was  mightily  stirred,  and  would  have  been 
grateful  to  be  allowed  to  remain  unmolested  and 
look  my  fill;  but  a  bald-summited  superintendent 
who  had  been  a  towheaded  Sunday-school  mate  of 
mine  of  that  spot  in  the  early  ages,  recognized  me, 
442 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

and  I  talked  a  flutter  of  wild  nonsense  to  those  chil- 
dren to  hide  the  thoughts  which  were  in  me,  and 
which  could  not  have  been  spoken  without  a  betrayal 
of  feeling  that  would  have  been  recognized  as  out  of 
character  with  me. 

Making  speeches  without  preparation  is  no  gift  of 
mine;  and  I  was  resolved  to  shirk  any  new  oppor- 
tunity, but  in  the  next  and  larger  Sunday-school  I 
found  myself  in  the  rear  of  the  assemblage;  so  I  was 
very  willing  to  go  on  the  platform  a  moment  for 
the  sake  of  getting  a  good  look  at  the  scholars.  On 
the  spur  of  the  moment  I  could  not  recall  any  of 
the  old  idiotic  talks  which  visitors  used  to  insult  me 
with  when  I  was  a  pupil  there;  and  I  was  sorry  for 
this,  since  it  would  have  given  me  time  and  excuse 
to  dawdle  there  and  take  a  long  and  satisfying  look 
at  what  I  feel  at  liberty  to  say  was  an  array  of  fresh 
young  comeliness  not  matchable  in  another  Sunday- 
school  of  the  same  size.  As  I  talked  merely  to  get 
a  chance  to  inspect,  and  as  I  strung  out  the  random 
rubbish  solely  to  prolong  the  inspection,  I  judged  it 
but  decent  to  confess  these  low  motives,  and  I 
did  so. 

If  the  Model  Boy  was  in  either  of  these  Sunday- 
schools,  I  did  not  see  him.  The  Model  Boy  of  my 
time — we  never  had  but  the  one — was  perfect:  per- 
fect in  manners,  perfect  in  dress,  perfect  in  conduct, 
perfect  in  filial  piety,  perfect  in  exterior  godliness; 
but  at  bottom  he  was  a  prig;  and  as  for  the  contents 
of  his  skull,  they  could  have  changed  place  with  the 
contents  of  a  pie,  and  nobody  would  have  been  the 
worse  off  for  it  but  the  pie.  This  fellow's  reproach- 
443 


MARK     TWAIN 

lessness  was  a  standing  reproach  to  every  lad  in  the 
village.  He  was  the  admiration  of  all  the  mothers, 
and  the  detestation  of  all  their  sons.  I  was  told 
what  became  of  him,  but  as  it  was  a  disappointment 
to  me,  I  will  not  enter  into  details.  He  succeeded 
in  life. 


CHAPTER  LV 

A   VENDETTA   AND    OTHER   THINGS 

URING  my  three  days'  stay  in  the  town,  I  woke 
I  up  every  morning  with  the  impression  that  I 
was  a  boy — f or  in  my  dreams  the  faces  were  all  young 
again,  and  looked  as  they  had  looked  in  the  old 
times;  but  I  went  to  bed  a  hundred  years  old,  every 
night — for  meantime  I  had  been  seeing  those  faces 
as  they  are  now. 

Of  course  I  suffered  some  surprises,  along  at  first, 
before  I  had  become  adjusted  to  the  changed  state 
of  things.  I  met  young  ladies  who  did  not  seem  to 
have  changed  at  all;  but  they  turned  out  to  be  the 
daughters  of  the  young  ladies  I  had  in  mind — some- 
times their  granddaughters.  When  you  are  told  that 
a  stranger  of  fifty  is  a  grandmother,  there  is  nothing 
surprising  about  it;  but  if,  on  the  contrary,  she  is  a 
person  whom  you  knew  as  a  little  girl,  it  seems  im- 
possible. You  say  to  yourself, ' '  How  can  a  little  girl 
be  a  grandmother?"  It  takes  some  little  time  to 
accept  and  realize  the  fact  that  while  you  have  been 
growing  old,  your  friends  have  not  been  standing 
still,  in  that  matter. 

I  noticed  that  the  greatest  changes  observable 
were  with  the  women,  not  the  men.  I  saw  men 
whom  thirty  years  had  changed  but  slightly;  but 
445 


MARK    TWAIN 

their  wives  had  grown  old.  These  were  good  women ; 
it  is  very  wearing  to  be  good. 

There  was  a  saddler  whom  I  wished  to  see;  but 
he  was  gone.  Dead,  these  many  years,  they  said. 
Once  or  twice  a  day,  the  saddler  used  to  go  tearing 
down  the  street,  putting  on  his  coat  as  he  went; 
and  then  everybody  knew  a  steamboat  was  coming. 
Everybody  knew,  also,  that  John  Stavely  was  not 
expecting  anybody  by  the  boat — or  any  freight, 
either;  and  Stavely  must  have  known  that  every- 
body knew  this,  still  it  made  no  difference  to  him; 
he  liked  to  seem  to  himself  to  be  expecting  a  hundred 
thousand  tons  of  saddles  by  this  boat,  and  so  he 
went  on  all  his  life,  enjoying  being  faithfully  on  hand 
to  receive  and  receipt  for  those  saddles,  in  case  by 
any  miracle  they  should  come.  A  malicious  Quincy 
paper  used  always  to  refer  to  this  town,  in  derision, 
as  " Stavely 's  Landing."  Stavely  was  one  of  my 
earliest  admirations;  I  envied  him  his  rush  of  im- 
aginary business,  and  the  display  he  was  able  to 
make  of  it  before  strangers,  as  he  went  flying  down 
the  street,  struggling  with  his  fluttering  coat. 

But  there  was  a  carpenter  who  was  my  chief est 
hero.  He  was  a  mighty  liar,  but  I  did  not  know 
that;  I  believed  everything  he  said.  He  was  a  ro- 
mantic, sentimental,  melodramatic  fraud,  and  his 
bearing  impressed  me  with  awe.  I  vividly  remem- 
ber the  first  time  he  took  me  into  his  confidence. 
He  was  planing  a  board,  and  every  now  and  then 
he  would  pause  and  heave  a  deep  sigh  and  occasion- 
ally mutter  broken  sentences — confused  and  not 
intelligible — but  out  of  their  midst  an  ejaculation 
446 


LIFE     ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

sometimes  escaped  which  made  me  shiver  and  did 
me  good:  one  was,  "O  God,  it  is  his  blood!"  I  sat 
on  the  tool-chest  and  humbly  and  shudderingly  ad- 
mired him;  for  I  judged  he  was  full  of  crime.  At 
last  he  said  in  a  low  voice : 

"My  little  friend,  can  you  keep  a  secret?" 

I  eagerly  said  I  could. 

"A  dark  and  dreadful  one?" 

I  satisfied  him  on  that  point. 

"Then  I  will  tell  you  some  passages  in  my  his- 
tory; for  oh,  I  must  relieve  my  burdened  soul,  or  I 
shall  die!" 

He  cautioned  me  once  more  to  be  "as  silent  as 
the  grave";  then  he  told  me  he  was  a  "red-handed 
murderer."  He  put  down  his  plane,  held  his  hands 
out  before  him,  contemplated  them  sadly,  and  said: 

"Look — with  these  hands  I  have  taken  the  lives 
of  thirty  human  beings!" 

The  effect  which  this  had  upon  me  was  an  inspira- 
tion to  him,  and  he  turned  himself  loose  upon  his 
subject  with  interest  and  energy.  He  left  general- 
izing, and  went  into  details — began  with  his  first 
murder;  described  it,  told  what  measures  he  had 
taken  to  avert  suspicion;  then  passed  to  his  second 
homicide,  his  third,  his  fourth,  and  so  on.  He  had 
always  done  his  murders  with  a  bowie-knife,  and  he 
made  all  my  hairs  rise  by  suddenly  snatching  it  out 
and  showing  it  to  me. 

At  the  end  of  this  first  stance  I  went  home  with 

six  of  his  fearful  secrets  among  my  freightage,  and 

found  them  a  great  help  to  my  dreams,  which  had 

been  sluggish  for  a  while  back.     I  sought  him  again 

447 


MARK     TWAIN 

and  again,  on  my  Saturday  holidays ;  in  fact,  I  spent 
the  summer  with  him — all  of  it  which  was  valuable 
to  me.  His  fascinations  never  diminished,  for  he 
threw  something  fresh  and  stirring,  in  the  way  of 
horror,  into  each  successive  murder.  He  always  gave 
names,  dates,  places — everything.  This  by  and  by 
enabled  me  to  note  two  things:  that  he  had  killed 
his  victims  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe,  and  that 
these  victims  were  always  named  Lynch.  The  de- 
struction of  the  Lynches  went  serenely  on,  Saturday 
after  Saturday,  until  the  original  thirty  had  multi- 
plied to  sixty — and  more  to  be  heard  from  yet ;  then 
my  curiosity  got  the  better  of  my  timidity,  and  I 
asked  how  it  happened  that  these  justly  punished 
persons  all  bore  the  same  name. 

My  hero  said  he  had  never  divulged  that  dark 
secret  to  any  living  being;  but  felt  that  he  could 
trust  me,  and  therefore  he  would  lay  bare  before  me 
the  story  of  his  sad  and  blighted  life.  He  had  loved 
one  "too  fair  for  earth,"  and  she  had  reciprocated 
"with  all  the  sweet  affection  of  her  pure  and  noble 
nature. "  B  ut  he  had  a  rival,  a  ' '  base  hireling ' '  named 
Archibald  Lynch,  who  said  the  girl  should  be  his,  or 
he  would  "dye  his  hands  in  her  heart's  best  blood." 
The  carpenter,  "innocent  and  happy  in  love's  young 
dream,"  gave  no  weight  to  the  threat,  but  led  his 
"golden-haired  darling  to  the  altar,"  and  there  the 
two  were  made  one ;  there,  also,  just  as  the  minister's 
hands  were  stretched  in  blessing  over  their  heads, 
the  fell  deed  was  done — with  a  knife — and  the  bride 
fell  a  corpse  at  her  husband's  feet.  And  what  did 
the  husband  do?  He  plucked  forth  that  knife,  and, 
448 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

kneeling  by  the  body  of  his  lost  one,  swore  to  "con- 
secrate his  life  to  the  extermination  of  all  the  human 
scum  that  bear  the  hated  name  of  Lynch." 

That  was  it.  He  had  been  hunting  down  the 
Lynches  and  slaughtering  them,  from  that  day  to 
this — twenty  years.  He  had  always  used  that  same 
consecrated  knife;  with  it  he  had  murdered  his  long 
array  of  Lynches,  and  with  it  he  had  left  upon  the 
forehead  of  each  victim  a  peculiar  mark — a  cross, 
deeply  incised.  Said  he: 

"The  cross  of  the  Mysterious  Avenger  is  known 
in  Europe,  in  America,  in  China,  in  Siam,  in  the 
Tropics,  in  the  Polar  Seas,  in  the  deserts  of  Asia, 
in  all  the  earth.  Wherever  in  the  uttermost  parts 
of  the  globe  a  Lynch  has  penetrated,  there  has  the 
Mysterious  Cross  been  seen,  and  those  who  have 
seen  it  have  shuddered  and  said,  'It  is  his  mark;  he 
has  been  here!'  You  have  heard  of  the  Mysterious 
Avenger — look  upon  him,  for  before  you  stands  no 
less  a  person!  But  beware — breathe  not  a  word  to 
any  soul.  Be  silent,  and  wait.  Some  morning  this 
town  will  flock  aghast  to  view  a  gory  corpse;  on  its 
brow  will  be  seen  the  awful  sign,  and  men  will  trem- 
ble and  whisper,  '  He  has  been  here — it  is  the  Myste- 
rious Avenger's  mark!'  You  will  come  here,  but  I 
shall  have  vanished;  you  will  see  me  no  more." 

This  ass  had  been  reading  the  "Jibbenainosay," 
no  doubt,  and  had  had  his  poor  romantic  head 
turned  by  it;  but  as  I  had  not  yet  seen  the  book 
then,  I  took  his  inventions  for  truth,  and  did  not 
suspect  that  he  was  a  plagiarist. 

However,  we  had  a  Lynch  living  in  the  town;  and 
449 


MARK    TWAIN 

the  more  I  reflected  upon  his  impending  doom,  the 
more  I  could  not  sleep.  It  seemed  my  plain  duty 
to  save  him,  and  a  still  plainer  and  more  important 
duty  to  get  some  sleep  for  myself,  so  at  last  I  ven- 
tured to  go  to  Mr.  Lynch  and  tell  him  what  was 
about  to  happen  to  him — under  strict  secrecy.  I 
advised  him  to  "fly,"  and  certainly  expected  him 
to  do  it.  But  he  laughed  at  me ;  and  he  did  not  stop 
there;  he  led  me  down  to  the  carpenter's  shop,  gave 
the  carpenter  a  jeering  and  scornful  lecture  upon  his 
silly  pretensions,  slapped  his  face,  made  him  get 
down  on  his  knees  and  beg — then  went  off  and  left 
me  to  contemplate  the  cheap  and  pitiful  ruin  of  what, 
in  my  eyes,  had  so  lately  been  a  majestic  and  in- 
comparable hero.  The  carpenter  blustered,  flour- 
ished his  knife,  and  doomed  this  Lynch  in  his  usual 
volcanic  style,  the  size  of  his  fateful  words  undimin- 
ished;  but  it  was  all  wasted  upon  me;  he  was  a 
hero  to  me  no  longer,  but  only  a  poor,  foolish,  ex- 
posed humbug.  I  was  ashamed  of  him,  and  ashamed 
of  myself;  I  took  no  further  interest  in  him,  and 
never  went  to  his  shop  any  more.  He  was  a  heavy 
loss  to  me,  for  he  was  the  greatest  hero  I  had  ever 
known.  The  fellow  must  have  had  some  talent; 
for  some  of  his  imaginary  murders  were  so  vividly ' 
and  dramatically  described  that  I  remember  all  their 
details  yet. 

The  people  of  Hannibal  are  not  more  changed  than 
is  the  town.  It  is  no  longer  a  village;  it  is  a  city, 
with  a  Mayor,  and  a  council,  and  water-works,  and 
probably  a  debt.  It  has  fifteen  thousand  people,  is 
a  thriving  and  energetic  place,  and  is  paved  like  the 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

rest  of  the  West  and  South — where  a  well -paved 
street  and  a  good  sidewalk  are  things  so  seldom  seen 
that  one  doubts  them  when  he  does  see  them.  The 
customary  half-dozen  railways  center  in  Hannibal 
now,  and  there  is  a  new  depot,  which  cost  a  hundred 
thousand  dollars.  In  my  time  the  town  had  no 
specialty,  and  no  commercial  grandeur;  the  daily 
packet  usually  landed  a  passenger  and  bought  a 
catfish,  and  took  away  another  passenger  and  a  hatful 
of  freight ;  but  now  a  huge  commerce  in  lumber  has 
grown  up,  and  a  large  miscellaneous  commerce  is  one 
of  the  results.  A  deal  of  money  changes  hands 
there  now. 

Bear  Creek — so  called,  perhaps,  because  it  was 
always  so  particularly  bare  of  bears — is  hidden  out  of 
sight  now,  under  islands  and  continents  of  piled 
lumber,  and  nobody  but  an  expert  can  find  it.  I 
used  to  get  drowned  in  it  every  summer  regularly, 
and  be  drained  out,  and  inflated  and  set  going  again 
by  some  chance  enemy;  but  not  enough  of  it  is  un- 
occupied now  to  drown  a  person  in.  It  was  a  famous 
breeder  of  chills  and  feve^in  its  day.  I  remember 
one  summer  when  everybody  in  town  had  this  dis- 
ease at  once.  Many  chimneys  were  shaken  down, 
and  all  the  houses  were  so  racked  that  the  town  had 
to  be  rebuilt.  The  chasm  or  gorge  between  Lover's 
Leap  and  the  hill  west  of  it  is  supposed  by  scientists 
to  have  been  caused  by  glacial  action.  This  is  a 
mistake. 

There  is  an  interesting  cave  a  mile  or  two  below 
Hannibal,  among  the  bluffs.  I  would  have  liked  to 
revisit  it,  but  had  not  time.  In  my  time  the  person 
45 1 


MARK     TWAIN 

who  then  owned  it  turned  it  into  a  mausoleum  for  his 
daughter,  aged  fourteen.  The  body  of  this  poor 
child  was  put  into  a  copper  cylinder  filled  with  alco- 
hol, and  this  was  suspended  in  one  of  the  dismal 
avenues  of  the  cave.  The  top  of  the  cylinder  was 
removable;  and  it  was  said  to  be  a  common  thing 
for  the  baser  order'  of  tourists  to  drag  the  dead  face 
into  view  and  examine  it  and  comment  upon  it. 


CHAPTER  LVI 

A   QUESTION    OF    LAW 

THE  slaughter-house  is  gone  from  the  mouth  of 
Bear  Creek  and  so  is  the  small  jail  (or  "cala- 
boose") which  once  stood  in  its  neighborhood.  A 
citizen  asked,  "Do  you  remember  when  Jimmy 
Finn,  the  town  drunkard,  was  burned  to  death  in  the 
calaboose?" 

Observe,  now,  how  history  becomes  defiled, 
through  lapse  of  time  and  the  help  of  the  bad  mem- 
ories of  men.  Jimmy  Finn  was  not  burned  in  the 
calaboose,  but  died  a  natural  death  in  a  tan  vat,  of 
a  combination  of  delirium  tremens  and  spontaneous 
combustion.  When  I  say  natural  death,  I  mean  it 
was  a  natural  death  for  Jimmy  Finn  to  die.  The 
calaboose  victim  was  not  a  citizen;  he  was  a  poor 
stranger,  a  harmless,  whisky-sodden  tramp.  I  know 
more  about  his  case  than  anybody  else;  I  knew  too 
much  of  it,  in  that  bygone  day,  to  relish  speaking 
of  it.  That  tramp  was  wandering  about  the  streets 
one  chilly  evening,  with  a  pipe  in  his  mouth,  and 
begging  for  a  match;  he  got  neither  matches  nor 
courtesy;  on  the  contrary,  a  troop  of  bad  little  boys 
followed  him  around  and  amused  themselves  with 
nagging  and  annoying  him.  I  assisted;  but  at  last, 
453 


MARK    TWAIN 

some  appeal  which  the  wayfarer  made  for  forbear- 
ance, accompanying  it  with  a  pathetic  reference  to 
his  forlorn  and  friendless  condition,  touched  such 
sense  of  shame  and  remnant  of  right  feeling  as  were 
left  in  me,  and  I  went  away  and  got  him  some 
matches,  and  then  hied  me  home  and  to  bed,  heavily 
weighted  as  to  conscience,  and  unbuoyant  in  spirit. 
An  hour  or  two  afterward  the  man  was  arrested  and 
locked  up  in  the  calaboose  by  the  marshal — large 
name  for  a  constable,  but  that  was  his  title.  At 
two  in  the  morning,  the  church-bells  rang  for  fire, 
and  everybody  turned  out,  of  course — I  with  the  rest. 
The  tramp  had  used  his  matches  disastrously;  he 
had  set  his  straw  bed  on  fire,  and  the  oaken  sheathing 
of  the  room  had  caught.  When  I  reached  the 
ground,  two  hundred  men,  women,  and  children 
stood  massed  together,  transfixed  with  horror,  and 
staring  at  the  grated  windows  of  the  jail.  Behind 
the  iron  bars,  and  tugging  frantically  at  them,  and 
screaming  for  help,  stood  the  tramp ;  he  seemed  like 
a  black  object  set  against  a  sun,  so  white  and  intense 
was  the  light  at  his  back.  That  marshal  could  not 
be  found,  and  he  had  the  only  key.  A  battering- 
ram  was  quickly  improvised,  and  the  thunder  of  its 
blows  upon  the  door  had  so  encouraging  a  sound  that 
the  spectators  broke  into  wild  cheering,  and  believed 
the  merciful  battle  won.  But  it  was  not  so.  The 
timbers  were  too  strong ;  they  did  not  yield.  It  was 
said  that  the  man's  death-grip  still  held  fast  to  the 
bars  after  he  was  dead;  and  that  in  this  position  the 
fires  wrapped  him  about  and  consumed  him.  As  to 
this,  I  do  not  know.  What  was  seen,  after  I  recog- 
454 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

nized  the  face  that  was  pleading  through  the  bars, 
was  seen  by  others,  not  by  me. 

I  saw  that  face,  so  situated,  every  night  for  a 
long  time  afterward;  and  I  believed  myself  as  guilty 
of  the  man's  death  as  if  I  had  given  him  the  matches 
purposely  that  he  might  burn  himself  up  with  them. 
I  had  not  a  doubt  that  I  should  be  hanged  if  my 
connection  with  this  tragedy  were  found  out.  The 
happenings  and  the  impressions  of  that  time  are 
burned  into  my  memory,  and  the  study  of  them 
entertains  me  as  much  now  as  they  themselves  dis- 
tressed me  then.  If  anybody  spoke  of  that  grisly 
matter,  I  was  all  ears  in  a  moment,  and  alert  to  hear 
what  might  be  said,  for  I  was  always  dreading  and 
expecting  to  find  out  that  I  was  suspected;  and  so 
fine  and  so  delicate  was  the  perception  of  my  guilty 
conscience  that  it  often  detected  suspicion  in  the 
most  purposeless  remarks,  and  in  looks,  gestures, 
glances  of  the  eye,  which  had  no  significance,  but 
which  sent  me  shivering  away  in  a  panic  of  fright, 
just  the  same.  And  how  sick  it  made  me  when 
somebody  dropped,  howsoever  carelessly  and  barren 
of  intent,  the  remark  that  "murder  will  out!"  For 
a  boy  of  ten  years,  I  was  carrying  a  pretty  weighty 
cargo. 

All  this  time  I  was  blessedly  forgetting  one  thing — 
the  fact  that  I  was  an  inveterate  talker  in  my  sleep. 
But  one  night  I  awoke  and  found  my  bed-mate — 
my  younger  brother — sitting  up  in  bed  and  contem- 
plating me  by  the  light  of  the  moon.  I  said : 

"What  is  the  matter?" 

"You  talk  so  much  I  can't  sleep." 
455 


MARK    TWAIN 

I  came  to  a  sitting  posture  in  an  instant,  with  my 
kidneys  in  my  throat  and  my  hair  on  end. 

"What  did  I  say?  Quick — out  with  it — what  did 
I  say?" 

"Nothing  much." 
"It's  a  lie — you  know  everything!" 
"Everything  about  what?" 
"You  know  well  enough.    About  that." 
"About  what?    I  don't  know  what  you  are  talking 
about.     I  think  you  are  sick  or  crazy  or  something. 
But  anyway,  you're  awake,  and  I'll  get  to  sleep 
while  I've  got  a  chance." 

He  fell  asleep  and  I  lay  there  in  a  cold  sweat,  turn- 
ing this  new  terror  over  in  the  whirling  chaos  which 
did  duty  as  my  mind.  The  burden  of  my  thought 
was,  How  much  did  I  divulge  ?  How  much  does  he 
know?  What  a  distress  is  this  uncertainty !  But  by 
and  by  I  evolved  an  idea — I  would  wake  my  brother 
and  probe  him  with  a  supposititious  case.  I  shook 
him  up,  and  said: 

"Suppose  a  man  should  come  to  you  drunk — " 
"This  is  foolish — I  never  get  drunk." 
1 '  I  don't  mean  you,  idiot — I  mean  the  man.    Sup- 
pose a  man  should  come  to  you  drunk,  and  borrow 
a  knife,  or  a  tomahawk,  or  a  pistol,  and  you  forgot 
to  tell  him  it  was  loaded,  and — " 
"How  could  you  load  a  tomahawk?" 
' '  I  don't  mean  the  tomahawk,  and  I  didn't  say  the 
tomahawk;  I  said  the  pistol.     Now,  don't  you  keep 
breaking  in  that  way,  because  this  is  serious.    There's 
been  a  man  killed." 

"What!    In  this  town?" 
456 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

"Yes,  in  this  town." 

"Well,  go  on — I  won't  say  a  single  word." 

"Well,  then,  suppose  you  forgot  to  tell  him  to 
be  careful  with  it,  because  it  was  loaded,  and  he 
went  off  and  shot  himself  with  that  pistol — fooling 
with  it,  you  know,  and  probably  doing  it  by  accident, 
being  drunk.  Well,  would  it  be  murder?" 

"No — suicide." 

"No,  no!  I  don't  mean  his  act,  I  mean  yours. 
Would  you  be  a  murderer  for  letting  him  have  that 
pistol?" 

After  deep  thought  came  this  answer: 

"Well,  I  should  think  I  was  guilty  of  something — 
maybe  murder — yes,  probably  murder,  but  I  don't 
quite  know." 

This  made  me  very  uncomfortable.  However,  it 
was  not  a  decisive  verdict.  I  should  have  to  set  out 
the  real  case — there  seemed  to  be  no  other  way. 
But  I  would  do  it  cautiously,  and  keep  a  watch  out 
for  suspicious  effects.  I  said: 

"I  was  supposing  a  case,  but  I  am  coming  to  the 
real  one  now.  Do  you  know  how  the  man  came  to 
be  burned  up  in  the  calaboose?" 

"No." 

"Haven't  you  the  least  idea?" 

"Not  the  least." 

"Wish  you  may  die  in  your  tracks  if  you  have?" 

"Yes,  wish  I  may  die  in  my  tracks." 

"Well,  the  way  of  it  was  this.     The  man  wanted 
some  matches  to  light  his  pipe.     A  boy  got  him 
some.     The  man  set  fire  to  the  calaboose  with  those 
very  matches,  and  burnt  himself  up." 
457 


MARK    TWAIN 

"Is  that  so?" 

"Yes,  it  is.  Now,  is  that  boy  a  murderer,  do  you 
think?" 

"Let  me  see.     The  man  was  drunk?" 

"Yes,  he  was  drunk." 

"Very  drunk?" 

"Yes." 

"And  the  boy  knew  it?" 

"Yes,  he  knew  it." 

There  was  a  long  pause.  Then  came  this  heavy 
verdict : 

"If  the  man  was  drunk,  and  the  boy  knew  it, 
the  boy  murdered  that  man.  This  is  certain." 

Faint,  sickening  sensations  crept  along  all  the 
fibers  of  my  body,  and  I  seemed  to  know  how  a 
person  feels  who  hears  his  death-sentence  pronounced 
from  the  bench.  I  waited  to  hear  what  my  brother 
would  say  next.  I  believed  I  knew  what  it  would 
be,  and  I  was  right.  He  said: 

"I  know  the  boy." 

I  had  nothing  to  say;  so  I  said  nothing.  I  simply 
shuddered.  Then  he  added: 

"Yes,  before  you  got  half  through  telling  about 
the  thing,  I  knew  perfectly  well  who  the  boy  was; 
it  was  Ben  Coontz!" 

I  came  out  of  my  collapse  as  one  who  rises  from 
the  dead.  I  said,  with  admiration: 

"Why,  how  in  the  world  did  you  ever  guess  it?" 

"You  told  me  in  your  sleep." 

I  said  to  myself,  "How  splendid  that  is!  This  is 
a  habit  which  must  be  cultivated." 

My  brother  rattled  innocently  on : 
458 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

"When  you  were  talking  in  your  sleep,  you  kept 
mumbling  something  about  'matches,'  which  I 
couldn't  make  anything  out  of;  but  just  now,  when 
you  began  to  tell  me  about  the  man  and  the  cala- 
boose and  the  matches,  I  remembered  that  in  your 
sleep  you  mentioned  Ben  Coontz  two  or  three  times; 
so  I  put  this  and  that  together,  you  see,  and  right 
away  I  knew  it  was  Ben  that  burnt  that  man  up." 

I  praised  his  sagacity  effusively.  Presently  he 
asked : 

"Are  you  going  to  give  him  up  to  the  law?" 

"No,"  I  said,  "I  believe  that  this  will  be  a  lesson 
to  him.  I  shall  keep  an  eye  on  him,  of  course,  for 
that  is  but  right;  but  if  he  stops  where  he  is  and  re- 
forms, it  shall  never  be  said  that  I  betrayed  him." 

"How  good  you  are!" 

"Well,  I  try  to  be.  It  is  all  a  person  can  do  in  a 
world  like  this." 

And  now,  my  burden  being  shifted  to  other  shoul- 
ders, my  terrors  soon  faded  away. 

The  day  before  we  left  Hannibal,  a  curious  thing 
fell  under  my  notice — the  surprising  spread  which 
longitudinal  time  undergoes  there.  I  learned  it 
from  one  of  the  most  unostentatious  of  men — the 
colored  coachman  of  a  friend  of  mine,  who  lives  three 
miles  from  town.  He  was  to  call  for  me  at  the 
Park  Hotel  at  7.30  P.M.,  and  drive  me  out.  But  he 
missed  it  considerably — did  not  arrive  till  ten.  He 
excused  himself  by  saying: 

"De  time  is  mos'  an  hour  en  a  half  slower  in  de 
country  en  what  it  is  in  de  town;  you'll  be  in  plenty 
time,  boss.  Sometimes  we  shoves  out  early  for 
459 


MARK     TWAIN 

church,  Sunday,  en  fetches  up  dah  right  plum  in  de 
middle  er  de  sermon.  Diffunce  in  de  time.  A  body 
can't  make  no  calculations  'bout  it." 

I  had  lost  two  hours  and  a  half;  but  I  had  learned 
a  fact  worth  four. 


CHAPTER  LVII 

AN   ARCHANGEL 

FROM  St.  Louis  northward  there  are  all  the  en- 
livening signs  of  the  presence  of  active,  energetic, 
intelligent,  prosperous,  practical  nineteenth-century 
populations.  The  people  don't  dream;  they  work. 
The  happy  result  is  manifest  all  around  in  the  sub- 
stantial outside  aspect  of  things,  and  the  suggestions 
of  wholesome  lif e  and  comfort  that  everywhere  appear. 

Quincy  is  a  notable  example — a  brisk,  handsome, 
well -ordered  city;  and  now,  as  formerly,  interested 
in  art,  letters,  and  other  high  things. 

But  Marion  City  is  an  exception.  Marion  City 
has  gone  backward  in  a  most  unaccountable  way. 
This  metropolis  promised  so  well  that  the  projectors 
tacked  "city"  to  its  name  in  the  very  beginning, 
with  full  confidence;  but  it  was  bad  prophecy. 
When  I  first  saw  Marion  City,  thirty-five  years  ago, 
it  contained  one  street,  and  nearly  or  quite  six 
houses.  It  contains  but  one  house  now,  and  this 
one,  in  a  state  of  ruin,  is  getting  ready  to  follow  the 
former  five  into  the  river. 

Doubtless  Marion  City  was  too  near  to  Quincy. 
It  had  another  disadvantage:  it  was  situated  in  a 
flat  mud  bottom,  below  high-water  mark,  whereas 
Quincy  stands  high  up  on  the  slope  of  a  hill. 
461 


MARK    TWAIN 

In  the  beginning  Quincy  had  the  aspect  and  ways 
of  a  model  New  England  town:  and  these  she  has 
yet;  broad,  clean  streets,  trim,  neat  dwellings  and 
lawns,  fine  mansions,  stately  blocks  of  commercial 
buildings.  And  there  are  ample  fair-grounds,  a  well- 
kept  park,  and  many  attractive  drives;  library, 
reading-rooms,  a  couple  of  colleges,  some  handsome 
and  costly  churches,  and  a  grand  court-house,  with 
grounds  which  occupy  a  square..  The  population  of 
the  city  is  thirty  thousand.  There  are  some  large 
factories  here,  and  manufacturing,  of  many  sorts,  is 
done  on  a  great  scale. 

La  Grange  and  Canton  are  growing  towns,  but  I 
missed  Alexandria;  was  told  it  was  under  water,  but 
would  come  up  to  blow  in  the  summer. 

Keokuk  was  easily  recognizable.  I  lived  there  in 
1857 — an  extraordinary  year  there  in  real-estate 
matters.  The  "boom"  was  something  wonderful. 
Everybody  bought,  everybody  sold — except  widows 
and  preachers;  they  always  hold  on;  and  when  the 
tide  ebbs,  they  get  left.  Anything  in  the  semblance 
of  a  town  lot,  no  matter  how  situated,  was  salable, 
and  at  a  figure  which  would  still  have  been  high  if 
the  ground  had  been  sodded  with  greenbacks. 

The  town  has  a  population  of  fifteen  thousand 
now,  and  is  progressing  with  a  healthy  growth.  It 
was  night,  and  we  could  not  see  details,  for  which 
we  were  sorry,  for  Keokuk  has  the  reputation  of 
being  a  beautiful  city.  It  was  a  pleasant  one  to  live 
in  long  ago,  and  doubtless  has  advanced,  not  retro- 
graded, in  that  respect. 

A  mighty  work,  which  was  in  progress  there  in  my 
462 


LIFE     ON     THE    MISSISSIPPI 

day,  is  finished  now.  This  is  the  canal  over  the 
Rapids.  It  is.  eight  miles  long,  three  hundred  feet 
wide,  and  is  in  no  place  less  than  six  feet  deep.  Its 
masonry  is  of  the  majestic  kind  which  the  War 
Department  usually  deals  in,  and  will  endure  like  a 
Roman  aqueduct .  The  work  cost  four  or  five  millions. 

After  an  hour  or  two  spent  with  former  friends, 
we  started  up  the  river  again.  Keokuk,  a  long  time 
ago,  was  an  occasipnal  loafing-place  of  that  erratic 
genius,  Henry  Clay  Dean.  I  believe  I  never  saw 
him  but  once;  but  he  was  much  talked  of  when  I 
lived  there.  This  is  what  was  said  of  him: 

He  began  life  poor  and  without  education.  But 
he  educated  himself — on  the  curbstones  of  Keokuk. 
He  would  sit  down  on  a  curbstone  with  his  book, 
careless  or  unconscious  of  the  clatter  of  commerce 
and  the  tramp  of  the  passing  crowds,  and  bury  him- 
self in  his  studies  by  the  hour,  never  changing  his 
position  except  to  draw  in  his  knees  now  and  then 
to  let  a  dray  pass  unobstructed;  and  when  his  book 
was  finished,  its  Contents,  however  abstruse,  had  been 
burned  into  his  thiemory,  and  were  his  permanent 
possession.  In  this  way  he  acquired  a  vast  hoard  of 
all  sorts  of  learning,  and  had  it  pigeonholed  in  his 
head  where  he  could  put  his  intellectual  hand  on  it 
whenever  it  was  wanted. 

His  clothes  differed  in  no  respect  from  a  "wharf- 
rat's,"  except  that  they  were  raggeder,  more  ill- 
assorted  and  inharmonious  (and  therefore  more  ex- 
travagantly picturesque),  and  several  layers  dirtier. 
Nobody  could  infer  the  master-mind  in  the  top  of 
that  edifice  from  the  edifice  itself. 
463 


MARK     TWAIN 

He  was  an  orator — by  nature  in  the  first  place,  and 
later  by  the  training  of  experience  and  practice. 
When  he  was  out  on  a  canvass,  his  name  was  a  lode- 
stone  which  drew  the  farmers  to  his  stump  from 
fifty  miles  around.  His  theme  was  always  politics. 
^e  used  no  notes,  for  a  volcano  does  not  need  notes. 
In  1862  a  son  of  Keokuk's  late  distinguished  citizen, 
Mr.  Claggett,  gave  me  this  incident  concerning 
Dean:  - 

The  war  feeling  was  running  high  in  Keokuk  (in 
'61),  and  a  great  mass-meeting  was  to  be  held  on 
a  certain  day  in  the  new  Athenaeum.  A  distin- 
guished stranger  was  to  address  the  house.  After 
the  building  had  been  packed  to  its  utmost  capacity 
with  sweltering  folk  of  both  sexes,  the  stage  still 
remained  vacant — the  distinguished  stranger  had 
failed  to  connect.  The  crowd  grew  impatient,  and 
by  and  by  indignant  and  rebellious.  About  this 
time  a  distressed  manager  discovered  Dean  on  a 
curbstone,  explained  the  dilemma  to  him,  took  his 
book  away  from  him,  rushed  him  into  the  building 
the  back  way,  and  told  him  to  make  for  the  stage 
and  save  his  country. 

Presently  a  sudden  silence  fell  upon  the  grumbling 
audience,  and  everybody's  eyes  sought  a  single  point 
— the  wide,  empty,  carpetless  stage.  A  figure  ap- 
peared there  whose  aspect  was  familiar  to  hardly  a 
dozen  persons  present.  It  was  the  scarecrow  Dean 
— in  foxy  shoes,  down  at  the  heels;  socks  of  odd 
colors,  also  "down";  damaged  trousers,  relics  of 
antiquity  and  a  world  too  short,  exposing  some  inches 
of  naked  ankle;  an  unbuttoned  vest,  also  too  short, 
464 


LIFE     ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

and  exposing  a  zone  of  soiled  and  wrinkled  linen  be- 
tween it  and  the  waist-band;  shirt-bosom  open;  long 
black  handkerchief,  wound  round  and  round  the 
neck  like  a  bandage;  bobtailed  blue  coat,  reaching 
down  to  the  small  of  the  back,  with  sleeves  which 
left  four  inches  of  forearm  unprotected;  small,  stiff- 
brimmed  soldier-cap  hung  on  a  corner  of  the  bump 
of — whichever  bump  it  was.  This  figure  moved 
gravely  out  upon  the  stage,  and  with  sedate  and 
measured  step,  down  to  the  front,  where  it  paused, 
and  dreamily  inspected  the  house,  saying  no  word. 
The  silence  of  surprise  held  its  own  for  a  moment, 
then  was  broken  by  a  just  audible  ripple  of  merri- 
ment which  swept  the  sea  of  faces  like  the  wash  of 
a  wave.  The  figure  remained  as  before,  thought- 
fully inspecting.  Another  wave  started — laughter, 
this  time.  It  was  followed  by  another,  then  a  third 
— this  last  one  boisterous. 

And  now  the  stranger  stepped  back  one  pace,  took 
off  his  soldier-cap,  tossed  it  into  the  wing,  and  began 
to  speak  with  deliberation,  nobody  listening,  every- 
body laughing  and  whispering.  The  speaker  talked 
on  unembarrassed,  and  presently  delivered  a  shot 
which  went  home,  and  silence  and  attention  resulted. 
He  followed  it  quick  and  fast  with  other  telling 
things;  warmed  to  his  work  and  began  to  pour  his 
words  out,  instead  of  dripping  them;  grew  hotter  and 
hotter,  and  fell  to  discharging  lightnings  and  thunder 
— and  now  the  house  began  to  break  into  applause, 
to  which  the  speaker  gave  no  heed,  but  went  hammer- 
ing straight  on ;  unwound  his  black  bandage  and  cast 
it  away,  still  thundering;  presently  discarded  the 
465 


MARK     TWAIN 

bobtailed  coat  and  flung  it  aside,  firing  up  higher 
and  higher  all  the  time;  finally  flung  the  vest  after 
the  coat ;  and  then  for  an  untimed  period  stood  there, 
like  another  Vesuvius,  spouting  smoke  and  flame, 
lava  and  ashes,  raining  pumice-stone  and  cinders, 
shaking  the  moral  earth  with  intellectual  crash  upon 
crash,  explosion  upon  explosion,  while  the  mad 
multitude  stood  upon  their  feet  in  a  solid  body, 
answering  back  with  a  ceaseless  hurricane  of  cheers, 
through  a  thrashing  snow-storm  of  waving  hand- 
kerchiefs. 

"When  Dean  came,"  said  Claggett,  "the  people 
thought  he  was  an  escaped  lunatic;  but  when  he 
went,  they  thought  he  was  an  escaped  archangel." 

Burlington,  home  of  the  sparkling  Burdette,  is 
another  hill-city ;  and  also  a  beautiful  one — unques- 
tionably so ;  a  fine  and  flourishing  city,  with  a  popu- 
lation of  twenty-five  thousand,  and  belted  with  busy 
factories  of  nearly  every  imaginable  description.  It 
was  a  very  sober  city,  too — for  the  moment — for  a 
most  sobering  bill  was  pending;  a  bill  to  forbid  the 
manufacture,  exportation,  importation,  purchase, 
sale,  borrowing,  lending,  stealing,  drinking,  smell- 
ing, or  possession,  by  conquest,  inheritance,  intent, 
accident,  or  otherwise,  in  the  state  of  Iowa,  of  each 
and  every  deleterious  beverage  known  to  the  human 
race,  except  water.  This  measure  was  approved  by 
all  the  rational  people  in  the  state;  but  not  by  the 
bench  of  judges. 

Burlington  has  the  progressive  modern  city's  full 
equipment  of  devices  for  right  and  intelligent  govern- 
ment, including  a  paid  fire  department;  a  thing 
466 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

which  the  great  city  of  New  Orleans  is  without,  but 
still  employs  that  relic  of  antiquity,  the  independent 
system. 

In  Burlington,  as  in  all  these  Upper-River  towns, 
one  breathes  a  go-ahead  atmosphere  which  tastes 
good  in  the  nostrils.  An  opera-house  has  lately  been 
built  there  which  is  in  strong  contrast  with  the  shab- 
by dens  which  usually  do  duty  as  theaters  in  cities 
of  Burlington's  size. 

We  had  not  time  to  go  ashore  in  Muscatine,  but 
had  a  daylight  view  of  it  from  the  boat.  I  lived 
there  awhile,  many  years  ago,  but  the  place,  now, 
had  a  rather  unfamiliar  look;  so  I  suppose  it  has 
clear  outgrown  the  town  which  I  used  to  know.  In 
fact,  I  know  it  has;  for  I  remember  it  as  a  small 
place — which  it  isn't  now.  But  I  remember  it  best 
for  a  lunatic  who  caught  me  out  in  the  fields,  one 
Sunday,  and  extracted  a  butcher-knife  from  his  boot 
and  proposed  to  carve  me  up  with  it,  unless  I 
acknowledged  him  to  be  the  only  son  of  the  Devil. 
I  tried  to  compromise  on  an  acknowledgment  that 
he  was  the  only  member  of  the  family  I  had  met; 
but  that  did  not  satisfy  him;  he  wouldn't  have  any 
half -measures ;  I  must  say  he  was  the  sole  and  only 
son  of  the  Devil — and  he  whetted  his  knife  on  his 
boot.  It  did  not  seem  worth  while  to  make  trouble 
about  a  little  thing  like  that ;  so  I  swung  round  to  his 
view  of  the  matter  and  saved  my  skin  whole.  Shortly 
afterward,  he  went  to  visit  his  father;  and  as  he  has 
not  turned  up  since,  I  trust  he  is  there  yet. 

And  I  remember  Muscatine — still  more  pleasantly 
— for  its  summer  sunsets.  I  have  never  seen  any, 
467 


MARK     TWAIN 

on  either  side  of  the  ocean,  that  equaled  them.  They 
used  the  broad,  smooth  river  as  a  canvas,  and  painted 
on  it  every  imaginable  dream  of  color,  from  the 
mottled  daintinesses  and  delicacies  of  the  opal,  all 
the  way  up,  through  cumulative  intensities,  to  blind- 
ing purple  and  crimson  conflagrations,  which  were 
enchanting  to  the  eye,  but  sharply  tried  it  at  the 
same  time.  All  the  Upper  Mississippi  region  has 
these  extraordinary  sunsets  as  a  familiar  spectacle. 
It  is  the  true  Sunset  Land:  I  am  sure  no  other 
country  can  show  so  good  a  right  to  the  name.  The 
sunrises  are  also  said  to  be  exceedingly  fine.  I  do 
not  know. 


CHAPTER  LVIII 

ON   THE    UPPER   RIVER 

THE  big  towns  drop  in,  thick  and  fast,  now:  and 
between  stretch  processions  of  thrifty  farms, 
not  desolate  solitude.  Hour  by  hour,  the  boat  plows 
deeper  and  deeper  into  the  great  and  populous 
Northwest;  and  with  each  successive  section  of  it 
which  is  revealed,  one's  surprise  and  respect  gather 
emphasis  and  increase.  Such  a  people,  and  such 
achievements  as  theirs,  compel  homage.  This  is  an 
independent  race  who  think  for  themselves,  and  who 
are  competent  to  do  it,  because  they  are  educated 
and  enlightened;  they  read,  they  keep  abreast  of  the 
best  and  newest  thought;  they  fortify  every  weak 
place  in  their  land  with  a  school,  a  college,  a  library, 
and  a  newspaper ;  and  they  live  under  law.  Solicitude 
for  the  future  of  a  race  like  this  is  not  in  order. 

This  region  is  new;  so  new  that  it  may  be  said 
to  be  still  in  its  babyhood.  By  what  it  has  accom- 
plished while  still  teething,  one  may  forecast  what 
marvels  it  will  do  in  the  strength  of  its  maturity. 
It  is  so  new  that  the  foreign  tourist  has  not  heard 
of  it  yet;  and  has  not  visited  it.  For  sixty  years  the 
foreign  tourist  has  steamed  up  and  down  the  river 
between  St.  Louis  and  New  Orleans,  and  then  gone 
home  and  written  his  book;  believing  he  had  seen 
469 


MARK     TWAIN 

all  of  the  river  that  was  worth  seeing  or  that  had 
anything  to  see.  In  not  six  of  all  these  books  is 
there  mention  of  these  Upper-River  towns — for  the 
reason  that  the  five  or  six  tourists  who  penetrated 
this  region  did  it  before  these  towns  were  projected. 
The  latest  tourist  of  them  all  (1878)  made  the  same 
old  regulation  trip— he  had  not  heard  that  there  was 
anything  north  of  St.  Louis. 

Yet  there  was.  There  was  this  amazing  region, 
bristling  with  great  towns,  projected  day  before 
yesterday,  so  to  speak,  and  built  next  morning.  A 
score  of  them  number  from  1,500  to  5,000  people. 
Then  we  have  Muscatine,  10,000;  Winona,  10,000; 
Moline,  10,000;  Rock  Island,  12,000;  La  Crosse, 
12,000;  Burlington,  25,000;  Dubuque,  25,000;  Daven- 
port, 30,000;  St.  Paul,  58,000;  Minneapolis,  60,000 
and  upward. 

The  foreign  tourist  has  never  heard  of  these; 
there  is  no  note  of  them  in  his  books.  They  have 
sprung  up  in  the  night,  while  he  slept.  So  new  is 
this  region  that  I,  who  am  comparatively  young,  am 
yet  older  than  it  is.  When  I  was  born  St.  Paul  had 
a  population  of  three  persons;  Minneapolis  had  just 
a  third  as  many.  The  then  population  of  Minne- 
apolis died  two  years  ago ;  and  when  he  died  he  had 
seen  himself  undergo  an  increase,  in  forty  years,  of 
fifty-nine  thousand  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine 
persons.  He  had  a  frog's  fertility. 

I  must  explain  that  the  figures  set  down  above, 

as  the  population  of  St.  Paul  and  Minneapolis,  are 

several   months  old.     These   towns   are   far   larger 

now.     In  fact,  I  have  just  seen  a  newspaper  esti- 

470 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

mate,  which  gives  the  former  seventy-one  thousand 
and  the  latter  seventy-eight  thousand.  This  book 
will  not  reach  the  public  for  six  or  seven  months 
yet ;  none  of  the  figures  will  be  worth  much  then. 

We  had  a  glimpse  at  Davenport,  which  is  another 
beautiful  city,  crowning  a  hill — a  phrase  which 
applies  to  all  these  towns;  for  they  are  all  comely, 
all  well  built,  clean,  orderly,  pleasant  to  the  eye, 
and  cheering  to  the  spirit;  and  they  are  all  situated 
upon  hills.  Therefore  we  will  give  that  phrase  a 
rest.  The  Indians  have  a  tradition  that  Marquette 
and  Joliet  camped  where  Davenport  now  stands,  in 
1673.  The  next  white  man  who  camped  there,  did 
it  about  a  hundred  and  seventy  years  later — in 
1843.  Davenport  has  gathered  its  thirty  thousand 
people  within  the  past  thirty  years.  She  sends 
more  children  to  her  schools  now  than  her  whole 
population  numbered  twenty-three  years  ago.  She 
has  the  usual  Upper-River  quota  of  factories,  news- 
papers, and  institutions  of  learning;  she  has  tele- 
phones, local  telegraphs,  an  electric  alarm,  and  an 
admirable  paid  fire  department,  consisting  of  six 
hook-and-ladder  companies,  four  steam  fire-engines, 
and  thirty  churches.  Davenport  is  the  official  resi- 
dence of  two  bishops — Episcopal  and  Catholic. 

Opposite  Davenport  is  the  flourishing  town  of 
Rock  Island,  which  lies  at  the  foot  of  the  Upper 
Rapids.  A  great  railroad  bridge  connects  the  two 
towns — one  of  the  thirteen  which  fret  the  Mississippi 
and  the  pilots  between  St.  Louis  and  St.  Paul. 

The  charming  island  of  Rock  Island,  three  miles 
long  and  half  a  mile  wide,  belongs  to  the  United 


MARK    TWAIN 

States,  and  the  government  has  turned  it  into  a 
wonderful  park,  enhancing  its  natural  attractions  by 
art,  and  threading  its  fine  forests  with  many  miles 
of  drives.  Near  the  center  of  the  island  one  catches 
glimpses,  through  the  trees,  of  ten  vast  stone  four- 
story  buildings,  each  of  which  covers  an  acre  of 
ground.  These  are  the  government  workshops;  for 
the  Rock  Island  establishment  is  a  national  armory 
and  arsenal. 

We  move  up  the  river — always  through  enchant- 
ing scenery,  there  being  no  other  kind  on  the  Upper 
Mississippi — and  pass  Moline,  a  center  of  vast 
manufacturing  industries;  and  Clinton  and  Lyons, 
great  lumber  centers;  and  presently  reach  Dubuque, 
which  is  situated  in  a  rich  mineral  region.  The  lead- 
mines  are  very  productive,  and  of  wide  extent. 
Dubuque  has  a  great  number  of  manufacturing 
establishments;  among  them  a  plow  factory,  which 
has  for  customers  all  Christendom  in  general.  At 
least  so  I  was  told  by  an  agent  of  the  concern  who 
was  on  the  boat.  He  said : 

"You  show  me  any  country  under  the  sun  where 
they  really  know  how  to  plow,  and  if  I  don't  show 
you  our  mark  on  the  plow  they  use,  I'll  eat  that 
plow;  and  I  won't  ask  for  any  Woostershyre  sauce 
to  flavor  it  up  with,  either." 

All  this  part  of  the  river  is  rich  in  Indian  history 
and  traditions.  Black  Hawk's  was  once  a  puissant 
name  hereabouts;  as  was  Keokuk's,  further  down. 
A  few  miles  below  Dubuque  is  the  Tete  de  Mort — 
Death's-head  rock,  or  bluff — to  the  top  of  which  the 
French  drove  a  band  of  Indians,  in  early  times,  and 
472 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

cooped  them  up  there,  with  death  for  a  certainty, 
and  only  the  manner  of  it  matter  of  choice — to 
starve,  or  jump  off  and  kill  themselves.  Black  Hawk 
adopted  the  ways  of  the  white  people  toward  the 
end  of  his  life ;  and  when  he  died  he  was  buried,  near 
Des  Moines,  in  Christian  fashion,  modified  by  Indian 
custom ;  that  is  to  say,  clothed  in  a  Christian  military 
uniform,  and  with  a  Christian  cane  in  his  hand,  but 
deposited  in  the  grave  in  a  sitting  posture.  Formerly, 
a  horse  had  always  been  buried  with  a  chief.  The 
substitution  of  the  cane  shows  that  Black  Hawk's 
haughty  nature  was  really  humbled,  and  he  expected 
to  walk  when  he  got  over. 

We  noticed  that  above  Dubuque  the  water  of  the 
Mississippi  was  olive-green — rich  and  beautiful  and 
semitransparent,  with  the  sun  on  it.  Of  course  the 
water  was  nowhere  as  clear  or  of  as  fine  a  complexion 
as  it  is  in  some  other  seasons  of  the  year;  for  now  it 
was  at  flood  stage,  and  therefore  dimmed  and  blurred 
by  the  mud  manufactured  from  caving  banks. 

The  majestic  bluffs  that  overlook  the  river,  along 
through  this  region,  charm  one  with  the  grace  and 
variety  of  their  forms,  and  the  soft  beauty  of  their 
adornment.  The  steep,  verdant  slope,  whose  base 
is  at  the  water's  edge,  is  topped  by  a  lofty  rampart 
of  broken,  turreted  rocks,  which  are  exquisitely  rich 
and  mellow  in  color — mainly  dark  browns  and  dull 
greens,  but  splashed  with  other  tints.  And  then  you 
have  the  shining  river,  winding  here  and  there  and 
yonder,  its  sweep  interrupted  at  intervals  by  clusters 
of  wooded  islands  threaded  by  silver  channels;  and 
you  have  glimpses  of  distant  villages,  asleep  upon 
473 


MARK     TWAIN 

capes ;  and  of  stealthy  rafts  slipping  along  in  the  shade 
of  the  forest  walls;  and  of  white  steamers  vanishing 
around  remote  points.  And  it  is  all  as  tranquil  and 
reposeful  as  dreamland,  and  has  nothing  this-worldly 
about  it — nothing  to  hang  a  fret  or  a  worry  upon. 

Until  the  unholy  train  comes  tearing  along — which 
it  presently  does,  ripping  the  sacred  solitude  to  rags 
and  tatters  with  its  devil's  war-whoop  and  the  roar 
and  thunder  of  its  rushing  wheels — and  straightway 
you  are  back  in  this  world,  and  with  one  of  its  frets 
ready  to  hand  for  your  entertainment:  for  you  re- 
member that  this  is  the  very  road  whose  stock  al- 
ways goes  down  after  you  buy  it,  and  always  goes 
up  again  as  soon  as  you  sell  it.  It  makes  me  shudder 
to  this  day,  to  remember  that  I  once  came  near  not 
getting  rid  of  my  stock  at  all.  It  must  be  an  awful 
thing  to  have  a  railroad  left  on  your  hands. 

The  locomotive  is  in  sight  from  the  deck  of  the 
steamboat  almost  the  whole 'way  from  St.  Louis  to 
St.  Paul — eight  hundred  miles.  These  railroads  have 
made  havoc  with  the  steamboat  commerce.  The 
clerk  of  our  boat  was  a  steamboat  clerk  before  these 
roads  were  built.  In  that  day  the  influx  of  popula- 
tion was  so  great,  and  the  freight  business  so  heavy, 
that  the  boats  were  not  able  to  keep  up  with  the 
demands  made  upon  their  carrying  capacity;  conse- 
quently the  captains  were  very  independent  and 
airy — pretty  "biggity,"  as  Uncle  Remus  would  say. 
The  clerk  nutshelled  the  contrast  between  the  former 
time  and  the  present,  thus: 

"Boat  used  to  land — captain  on  hurricane-roof — 
mighty  stiff  and  straight — iron  ramrod  for  a  spine 
474 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

— kid  gloves,  plug  tile,  hair  parted  behind — man  on 
shore  takes  off  hat  and  says: 

'"Got  twenty-eight  tons  of  wheat,  cap'n — be 
great  favor  if  you  can  take  them.' 

"Captain  says: 

"Til  take  two  of  them' — and  don't  even  conde- 
scend to  look  at  him. 

"But  nowadays  the  captain  takes  off  his  old 
slouch,  and  smiles  all  the  way  around  to  the  back 
of  his  ears,  and  gets  off  a  bow  which  he  hasn't  got 
any  ramrod  to  interfere  with,  and  says: 

"  'Glad  to  see  you,  Smith,  glad  to  see  you — you're 
looking  well — haven't  seen  you  looking  so  well  for 
years — what  you  got  for  us  ? ' 

"'Nuth'n','  says  Smith;  and  keeps  his  hat  on,  and 
just  turns  his  back  and  goes  to  talking  with  some- 
body else. 

' '  Oh,  yes !  eight  years  ago  the  captain  was  on  top ; 
but  it's  Smith's  turn  now.  Eight  years  ago  a  boat 
used  to  go  up  the  river  with  every  stateroom  full,  and 
people  piled  five  and  six  deep  on  the  cabin  floor;  and 
a  solid  deck-load  of  immigrants  and  harvesters  down 
below,  into  the  bargain.  To  get  a  first-class  state- 
room, you'd  got  to  prove  sixteen  quarterings  of 
nobility  and  four  hundred  years  of  descent,  or  be 
personally  acquainted  with  the  nigger  that  blacked 
the  captain's  boots.  But  it's  all  changed  now; 
plenty  staterooms  above,  no  harvesters  below — 
there's  a  patent  self-binder  now,  and  they  don't  have 
harvesters  any  more ;  they've  gone  where  the  wood- 
bine twineth — and  they  didn't  go  by  steamboat, 
either;  went  by  the  train." 
475 


MARK    TWAIN 

Up  in  this  region  we  met  massed  acres  of  lumber- 
rafts  coining  down — but  not  floating  leisurely  along, 
in  the  old-fashioned  way,  manned  with  joyous  and 
reckless  crews  of  fiddling,  song-singing,  whisky- 
drinking,  breakdown-dancing  rapscallions;  no,  the 
whole  thing  was  shoved  swiftly  along  by  a  powerful 
stern- wheeler,  modern  fashion;  and  the  small  crews 
were  quiet,  orderly  men,  of  a  sedate  business  aspect, 
with  not  a  suggestion  of  romance  about  them  any- 
where. 

Along  here,  somewhere,  on  a  black  night,  we  ran 
some  exceedingly  narrow  and  intricate  island  chutes 
by  aid  of  the  electric  light.  Behind  was  solid  black- 
,ness — a  crackless  bank  of  it;  ahead,  a  narrow  elbow 
of  water,  curving  between  dense  walls  of  foliage  that 
almost  touched  our  bows  on  both  sides;  and  here 
every  individual  leaf  and  every  individual  ripple 
stood  out  in  its  natural  color,  and  flooded  with  a 
glare  as  of  nooday  intensified.  The  effect  was 
strange  and  fine,  and  very  striking. 

We  passed  Prairie  du  Chien,  another  of  Father 
Marquette's  camping-places;  and  after  some  hours 
of  progress  through  varied  and  beautiful  scenery, 
reached  La  Crosse.  Here  is  a  town  of  twelve  or 
thirteen  thousand  population,  with  electric-lighted 
streets,  and  blocks  of  buildings  which  are  stately 
enough,  and  also  architecturally  fine  enough  to  com- 
mand respect  in  any  city.  It  is  a  choice  town,  and 
we  made  satisfactory  use  of  the  hour  allowed  us,  in 
roaming  it  over,  though  the  weather  was  rainier 
than  necessary. 


CHAPTER  LIX 

LEGENDS   AND   SCENERY 

A  \  7E  added  several  passengers  to  our  list  at 
V  V  La  Crosse;  among  others  an  old  gentleman 
who  had  come  to  this  Northwestern  region  with  the 
early  settlers,  and  was  familiar  with  every  part  of  it. 
Pardonably  proud  of  it,  too.  He  said: 

"You'll  find  scenery  between  here  and  St.  Paul 
that  can  give  the  Hudson  points.  You'll  have  the 
Queen's  Bluff — seven  hundred  feet  high,  and  just  as 
imposing  a  spectacle  as  you  can  find  anywheres ;  and 
Trempeleau  Island,  which  isn't  like  any  other  island 
in  America,  I  believe,  for  it  is  a  gigantic  mountain, 
with  precipitous  sides,  and  is  full  of  Indian  tradi- 
tions, and  used  to  be  full  of  rattlesnakes ;  if  you  catch 
the  sun  just  right  there,  you  will  have  a  picture  that 
will  stay  with  you.  And  above  Winona  you'll  have 
lovely  prairies ;  and  then  come  the  Thousand  Islands, 
too  beautiful  for  anything.  Green?  Why,  you 
never  saw  foliage  so  green,  nor  packed  so  thick;  it's 
like  a  thousand  plush  cushions  afloat  on  a  looking- 
glass — when  the  water's  still;  and  then  the  mon- 
strous bluffs  on  both  sides  of  the  river — ragged, 
rugged,  dark-complected — just  the  frame  that's 
wanted ;  you  always  want  a  strong  frame,  you  know, 
477 


MARK     TWAIN 

to  throw  up  the  nice  points  of  a  delicate  picture  and 
make  them  stand  out." 

The  old  gentleman  also  told  us  a  touching  Indian 
legend  or  two — but  not  very  powerful  ones. 

After  this  excursion  into  history,  he  came  back  to 
the  scenery,  and  described  it,  detail  by  detail,  from 
the  Thousand  Islands  to  St.  Paul;  naming  its  names 
with  such  facility,  tripping  along  his  theme  with  such 
nimble  and  confident  ease,  slamming  in  a  three-ton 
word,  here  and  there,  with  such  a  complacent  air 
of  'tisn't  -  anything,-I-can-do-it-any-time  -I-want-to, 
and  letting  off  fine  surprises  of  lurid  eloquence  at  such 
judicious  intervals,  that  I  presently  began  to  sus- 
pect- 
But  no  matter  what  I  began  to  suspect.  Hear  him : 
"Ten  miles  above  Winona  we  come  to  Fountain 
City,  nestling  sweetly  at  the  feet  of  cliffs  that  lift 
their  awful  fronts,  Jove-like,  toward  the  blue  depths 
of  heaven,  bathing  them  in  virgin  atmospheres  that 
have  known  no  other  contact  save  that  of  angels' 
wings. 

"And  next  we  glide  through  silver  waters,  amid 
lovely  and  stupendous  aspects  of  nature  that  attune 
our  hearts  to  adoring  admiration,  about  twelve  miles, 
and  strike  Mount  Vernon,  six  hundred  feet  high,  with 
romantic  ruins  of  a  once  first-class  hotel  perched  far 
among  the  cloud  shadows  that  mottle  its  dizzy 
heights — sole  remnant  of  once-flourishing  Mount 
Vernon,  town  of  early  days,  now  desolate  and  utterly 
deserted. 

"And  so  we  move  on.     Past  Chimney  Rock  we 
fly — noble  shaft  of  six  hundred  feet ;  then  just  before 
478 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

landing  at  Minnieska  our  attention  is  attracted  by 
a  most  striking  promontory  rising  over  five  hundred 
feet — the  ideal  mountain  pyramid.  Its  conic  shape, 
thickly  wooded  surface  girding  its  sides,  and  its  apex 
like  that  of  a  cone,  cause  the  spectator  to  wonder  at 
nature's  workings.  From  its  dizzy  heights  superb 
views  of  the  forests,  streams,  bluffs,  hills,  and  dales, 
below  and  beyond  for  miles,  are  brought  within  its 
focus.  What  grander  river  scenery  can  be  conceived, 
as  we  gaze  upon  this  enchanting  landscape,  from  the 
uppermost  point  of  these  bluffs  upon  the  valleys 
below?  The  primeval  wildness  and  awful  loneliness 
of  these  sublime  creations  of  nature  and  nature's 
God,  excite  feelings  of  unbounded  admiration,  and 
the  recollection  of  which  can  never  be  effaced  from 
the  memory,  as  we  view  them  in  any  direction. 

"Next  we  have  the  Lion's  Head  and  the  Lioness's 
Head,  carved  by  nature's  hand,  to  adorn  and  domi- 
nate the  beauteous  stream:  and  then  anon  the  river 
widens,  and  a  most  charming  and  magnificent  view 
of  the  valley  before  us  suddenly  bursts  upon  our 
vision;  rugged  hills,  clad  with  verdant  forests  from 
summit  to  base,  level  prairie-lands,  holding  in  their 
lap  the  beautiful  Wabasha,  City  of  the  Healing 
Waters,  puissant  foe  of  Bright 's  disease,  and  that 
grandest  conception  of  nature's  works,  incomparable 
Lake  Pepin — these  constitute  a  picture  whereon  the 
tourist's  eye  may  gaze  uncounted  hours,  with  rapture 
unappeased  and  unappeasable. 

"And  so  we  glide  along:  in  due  time  encountering 
those  majestic  domes,  the  mighty  Sugar  Loaf,  and 
the  sublime  Maiden's  Rock— which  latter,  romantic 
479 


MARK    TWAIN 

superstition  has  invested  with  a  voice ;  and  of ttimes 
as  the  birch  canoe  glides  near,  at  twilight,  the  dusky 
paddler  fancies  he  hears  the  soft  sweet  music  of  the 
long-departed  Winona,  darling  of  Indian  song  and 
story. 

"Then  Frontenac  looms  upon  our  vision,  delight- 
ful resort  of  jaded  summer  tourists ;  then  progressive 
Red  Wing;  and  Diamond  Bluff,  impressive  and  pre- 
ponderous  in  its  lone  sublimity;  then  Prescott  and 
the  St.  Croix;  and  anon  we  see  bursting  upon  us  the 
domes  and  steeples  of  St.  Paul,  giant  young  chief  of 
the  North,  marching  with  seven-league  stride  in  the 
van  of  progress,  banner-bearer  of  the  highest  and 
newest  civilization,  carving  his  beneficent  way  with 
the  tomahawk  of  commercial  enterprise,  sounding  the 
war-whoop  of  Christian  culture,  tearing  off  the 
reeking  scalp  of  sloth  and  superstition  to  plant  there 
the  steam -plow  and  the  schcolhouse  —  ever  in  his 
front  stretch  arid  lawlessness,  ignorance,  crime, 
despair;  ever  in  his  wake  bloom  the  jail,  the  gallows, 
and  the  pulpit;  and  ever — " 

"Have  you  ever  traveled  with  a  panorama?" 

"I  have  formerly  served  in  that  capacity." 

My  suspicion  was  confirmed. 

"Do  you  still  travel  with  it?" 

"No,  she  is  laid  up  till  the  fall  season  opens.  I 
am  helping  now  to  work  up  the  materials  for  a 
Tourists'  Guide  which  the  St.  Louis  and  St.  Paul 
Packet  Company  are  going  to  issue  this  summer  for 
the  benefit  of  travelers  who  go  by  that  line." 

"When  you  were  talking  of  Maiden's  Rock,  you 
spoke  of  the  long-departed  Winona,  darling  of  Indian 
480 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

song  and  story.     Is  she  the  maiden  of  the  rock? — 
and  are  the  two  connected  by  legend?" 

' '  Yes,  and  a  very  tragic  and  painful  one.  Perhaps 
the  most  celebrated,  as  well  as  the  most  pathetic,  of 
all  the  legends  of  the  Mississippi." 

We  asked  him  to  tell  it.  He  dropped  out  of  his 
conversational  vein  and  back  into  his  lecture  gait 
without  an  effort,  and  rolled  on  as  follows: 

"A  little  distance  above  Lake  City  is  a  famous 
point  known  as  Maiden's  Rock,  which  is  not  only  a 
picturesque  spot,  but  is  full  of  romantic  interest  from 
the  event  which  gave  it  its  name.  Not  many  years 
ago  this  locality  was  a  favorite  resort  for  the  Sioux 
Indians  on  account  of  the  fine  fishing  and  hunting  to 
be  had  there,  and  large  numbers  of  them  were  always 
to  be  found  in  this  locality.  Among  the  families 
which  used  to  resort  here  was  one  belonging  to  the 
tribe  of  Wabasha.  We-no-na  (firstborn)  was  the 
name  of  a  maiden  who  had  plighted  her  troth  to  a 
lover  belonging  to  the  same  band.  But  her  stern 
parents  had  promised  her  hand  to  another,  a  famous 
warrior,  and  insisted  on  her  wedding  him.  The  day 
was  fixed  by  her  parents,  to  her  great  grief.  She 
appeared  to  accede  to  the  proposal  and  accompanied 
them  to  the  rock,  for  the  puipose  of  gathering  flowers 
for  the  feast.  On  reaching  the  rock,  We-no-na  ran 
to  its  summit,  and,  standing  on  its  edge,  upbraided 
her  parents  who  were  below,  for  their  cruelty,  and 
then,  singing  a  death-dirge,  threw  herself  from  the 
precipice  and  dashed  them  in  pieces  on  the  rock 
below." 

"Dashed  who  in  pieces — her  parents?" 
481 


MARK    TWAIN 

"Yes." 

"Well,  it  certainly  was  a  tragic  business,  as  you 
say.  And  moreover,  there  is  a  startling  kind  of 
dramatic  surprise  about  it  which  I  was  not  looking 
for.  It  is  a  distinct  improvement  upon  the  thread- 
bare form  of  Indian  legend.  There  are  fifty  Lover's 
Leaps  along  the  Mississippi  from  whose  summit  dis- 
appointed Indian  girls  have  jumped,  but  this  is  the 
only  jump  in  the  lot  that  turned  out  in  the  right  and 
satisfactory  way.  What  became  of  Winona?" 

"She  was  a  good  deal  jarred  up  and  jolted:  but 
she  got  herself  together  and  disappeared  before  the 
coroner  reached  the  fatal  spot;  and  'tis  said  she 
sought  and  married  her  true  love,  and  wandered  with 
him  to  some  distant  clime,  where  she  lived  happy 
ever  after,  her  gentle  spirit  mellowed  and  chastened 
by  the  romantic  incident  which  had  so  early  deprived 
her  of  the  sweet  guidance  of  a  mother's  love  and  a 
father's  protecting  arm,  and  thrown  her,  all  un- 
friended, upon  the  cold  charity  of  a  censorious  world." 

I  was  glad  to  hear  the  lecturer's  description  of  the 
scenery,  for  it  assisted  my  appreciation  of  what  I 
saw  of  it,  and  enabled  me  to  imagine  such  of  it  as 
we  lost  by  the  intrusion  of  night. 

As  the  lecturer  remarked,  this  whole  region  is 
blanketed  with  Indian  tales  and  traditions.  But  I 
reminded  him  that  people  usually  merely  mentioned 
this  fact — doing  it  in  a  way  to  make  a  body's  mouth 
water — and  judiciously  stopped  there.  Why?  Be- 
cause the  impression  left  was  that  these  tales  were 
full  of  incident  and  imagination — a  pleasant  im- 
pression which  would  be  promptly  dissipated  if  the 
482 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

tales  were  told.  I  showed  him  a  loft  of  this  sort  of 
literature  which  I  had  been  collecting,  and  he  con- 
fessed that  it  was  poor  stuff,  exceedingly  sorry  rub- 
bish; and  I  ventured  to  add  that  the  legends  which 
he  had  himself  told  us  were  of  this  character,  with 
the  single  exception  of  the  admirable  story  of  Winona. 
He  granted  these  facts,  but  said  that  if  I  would  hunt 
up  Mr.  Schoolcraft's  book,  published  near  fifty  years 
ago,  and  now  doubtless  out  of  print,  I  would  find 
some  Indian  inventions  in  it  that  were  very  far  from 
being  barren  of  incident  and  imagination;  that  the 
tales  in  "Hiawatha"  were  of  this  sort,  and  they 
came  from  Schoolcraft's  book;  and  that  there  were 
others  in  the  same  book  which  Mr.  Longfellow  could 
have  turned  into  verse  with  good  effect.  For  in- 
stance, there  was  the  legend  of  "The  Undying 
Head."  He  could  not  tell  it,  for  many  of  the  details 
had  grown  dim  in  his  memory ;  but  he  would  recom- 
mend me  to  find  it  and  enlarge  my  respect  for  the 
Indian  imagination.  He  said  that  this  tale,  and 
most  of  the  others  in  the  book,  were  current  among 
the  Indians  along  this  part  of  the  Mississippi  when 
he  first  came  here;  and  that  the  contributors  to 
Schoolcraft's  book  had  got  them  directly  from 
Indian  lips,  and  had  written  them  down  with  strict 
exactness,  and  without  embellishments  of  their  own. 
I  have  found  the  book.  The  lecturer  was  right. 
There  are  several  legends  in  it  which  confirm  what 
he  said.  I  will  offer  two  of  them — "The  Undying 
Head,"  and  "Peboan  and  Seegwun,  an  Allegory  of 
the  Seasons."  The  latter  is  used  in  "Hiawatha"; 
but  it  is  worth  reading  in  the  original  form,  if  only 
483 


MARK    TWAIN 

that  one  may  see  how  effective  a  genuine  poem  can 
be  without  the  helps  and  graces  of  poetic  measure 
and  rhythm : 

PEBOAN  AND   SEEGWUN 

An  old  man  was  sitting  alone  in  his  lodge,  by  the  side  of  a 
frozen  stream.  It  was  the  close  of  winter,  and  his  fire  was  al- 
most out.  He  appeared  very  old  and  very  desolate.  His  locks 
were  white  with  age,  and  he  trembled  in  every  joint.  Day  after 
day  passed  in  solitude,  and  he  heard  nothing  but  the  sound  of 
the  tempest,  sweeping  before  it  the  new-fallen  snow. 

One  day,  as  his  fire  was  just  dying,  a  handsome  young  man 
approached  and  entered  his  dwelling.  His  cheeks  were  red  with 
the  blood  of  youth,  his  eyes  sparkled  with  animation,  and  a  smile 
played  upon  his  lips.  He  walked  with  a  light  and  quick  step. 
His  forehead  was  bound  with  a  wreath  of  sweet  grass,  in  place 
of  a  warrior's  frontlet,  and  he  carried  a  bunch  of  flowers  in  his 
hand. 

"Ah,  my  son!"  said  the  old  man,  "I  am  happy  to  see  you. 
Come  in!  Come  and  tell  me  of  your  adventures,  and  what 
strange  lands  you  have  been  to  see.  Let  us  pass  the  night 
together.  I  will  tell  you  of  my  prowess  and  exploits,  and  what 
I  can  perform.  You  shall  do  the  same,  and  we  will  amuse 
ourselves." 

He  then  drew  from  his  sack  a  curiously  wrought  antique  pipe, 
and  having  filled  it  with  tobacco,  rendered  mild  by  a  mixture 
of  certain  leaves,  handed  it  to  his  guest.  When  this  ceremony 
was  concluded  they  began  to  speak. 

"I  blow  my  breath,"  said  the  old  man,  "and  the  stream 
stands  still.  The  water  becomes  stiff  and  hard  as  clear  stone." 

"I  breathe,"  said  the  young  man,  "and  flowers  spring  up  over 
the  plain." 

"I  shake  my  locks,"  retorted  the  old  man,  "and  snow  covers 
the  land.  The  leaves  fall  from  the  trees  at  my  command,  and 
my  breath  blows  them  away.  The  birds  get  up  from  the  water, 
and  fly  to  a  distant  land.  The  animals  hide  themselves  from 
my  breath,  and  the  very  ground  becomes  as  hard  as  flint." 

"I  shake  my  ringlets,"  rejoined  the  young  man,  "and  warm 
showers  of  soft  rain  fall  upon  the  earth.  The  plants  lift  up  their 
heads  out  of  the  earth,  like  the  eyes  of  children  glistening  with 

484 


LIFE    ON    THE    MISSISSIPPI 

delight.  My  voice  recalls  the  birds.  The  warmth  of  my 
breath  unlocks  the  streams.  Music  fills  the  groves  wherever 
I  walk,  and  all  nature  rejoices." 

At  length  the  sun  began  to  rise.  A  gentle  warmth  came  over 
the  place.  The  tongue  of  the  old  man  became  silent.  The 
robin  and  bluebird  began  to  sing  on  the  top  of  the  lodge.  The 
stream  began  to  murmur  by  the  door,  and  the  fragrance  of  grow- 
ing herbs  and  flowers  came  softly  on  the  vernal  breeze. 

Daylight  fully  revealed  to  the  young  man  the  character  of 
his  entertainer.  When  he  looked  upon  him,  he  had  the  icy 
visage  of  Peboan.1  Streams  began  to  flow  from  his  eyes.  As 
the  sun  increased,  he  grew  less  and  less  in  stature,  and  anon  had 
melted  completely  away.  Nothing  remained  on  the  place  of  his 
lodge  fire  but  the  miskodeed,2  a  small  white  flower,  with  a  pink 
border,  which  is  one  of  the  earliest  species  of  northern  plants. 

"The  Undying  Head"  is  a  rather  long  tale,  but  it 
makes  up  in  weird  conceits,  fairy-tale  prodigies, 
variety  of  incident,  and  energy  of  movement,  for 
what  it  lacks  in  brevity.3 

1  Winter.  *  The  trailing  arbutus.  *  See  Appendix  D. 


CHAPTER  LX 

SPECULATIONS   AND    CONCLUSIONS 

WE  reached  St.  Paid,  at  the  head  of  navigation 
of  the  Mississippi,  and  there  our  voyage  of 
two  thousand  miles  from  New  Orleans  ended.  It  is 
about  a  ten-day  trip  by  steamer.  It  can  probably 
be  done  quicker  by  rail.  I  judge  so  because  I  know 
that  one  may  go  by  rail  from  St.  Louis  to  Hannibal 
— a  distance  of  at  least  a  hundred  and  twenty  miles 
— in  seven  hours.  This  is  better  than  walking; 
unless  one  is  in  a  hurry. 

The  season  being  far  advanced  when  we  were  in 
New  Orleans,  the  roses  and  magnolia  blossoms  were 
falling;  but  here  in  St.  Paul  it  was  the  snow.  In 
New  Orleans  we  had  caught  an  occasional  withering 
breath  from  over  a  crater,  apparently;  here  in  St. 
Paul  we  caught  a  frequent  benumbing  one  from  over 
a  glacier,  apparently. 

I  am  not  trying  to  astonish  by  these  statistics. 
No,  it  is  only  natural  that  there  should  be  a  sharp 
difference  between  climates  which  lie  upon  parallels 
of  latitude  which  are  one  or  two  thousand  miles 
apart.  I  take  this  position,  and  I  will  hold  it  and 
maintain  it  in  spite  of  the  newspapers.  The  news- 
paper thinks  it  isn't  a  natural  thing;  and  once  a 
year,  in  February,  it  remarks,  with  ill-concealed 
486 


LIFE     ON     THE    MISSISSIPPI 

exclamation-points,  that  while  we,  away  up  here,  are 
fighting  snow  and  ice^olks  are  having  new  straw- 
berries and  peas  down  South;  callas  are  blooming 
out-of-doors,  and  the  people  are  complaining  of  the 
warm  weather.  The  newspaper  never  gets  done 
being  surprised  about  it.  It  is  caught  regularly 
every  February.  There  must  be  a  reason  for  this; 
and  this  reason  must  be  change  of  hands  at  the 
editorial  desk.  You  cannot  surprise  an  individual 
more  than  twice  with  the  same  marvel — not  even 
with  the  February  miracles  of  the  Southern  climate; 
but  if  you  keep  putting  new  hands  at  the  editorial 
desk  every  year  or  two,  and  forget  to  vaccinate  them 
against  the  annual  climatic  surprise,  that  same  old 
thing  is  going  to  occur  right  along.  Each  year  one 
new  hand  will  have  the  disease,  and  be  safe  from 
its  recurrence;  but  this  does  not  save  the  newspaper. 
No,  the  newspaper  is  in  as  bad  case  as  ever;  it  will 
forever  have  its  new  hand;  and  so,  it  will  break  out 
with  the  strawberry  surprise  every  February  as  long 
as  it  lives.  The  new  hand  is  curable;  the  newspaper 
itself  is  incurable.  An  act  of  Congress — no,  Congress 
could  not  prohibit  the  strawberry  surprise  without 
questionably  stretching  its  powers.  An  amendment 
to  the  Constitution  might  fix  the  thing,  and  that  is 
probably  the  best  and  quickest  way  to  get  at  it. 
Under  authority  of  such  an  amendment,  Congress 
could  then  pass  an  act  inflicting  imprisonment  for 
life  for  the  first  offense,  and  some  sort  of  lingering 
death  for  subsequent  ones;  and  this,  no  doubt,  would 
presently  give  us  a  rest.  At  the  same  time,  the 
amendment  and  the  resulting  act  and  penalties  might 
487 


MARK     TWAIN 

easily  be  made  to  cover  various  cognate  abuses, 
such  as  the  Annual  -Veteran  -who  -has  -Voted  -for- 
Every  -  President  -  from  -  Washington  -  down,  -  and- 
Walked-to-the-Polls-Yesterday-with-as-Bright-an- 
Eye-and-as-Firm-a-Step-as-Ever,  and  ten  or  eleven 
other  weary  yearly  marvels  of  that  sort,  and  of  the 
Oldest-Freemason,  and  Oldest-Printer,  and  Oldest- 
Baptist-Preacher,  and  Oldest-Alumnus  sort,  and 
Three-Children-Born-at-a-Birth  sort,  and  so  on,  and 
so  on.  And  then  England  would  take  it  up  and  pass 
a  law  prohibiting  the  further  use  of  Sidney  Smith's 
jokes,  and  appointing  a  commissioner  to  construct 
some  new  ones.  Then  life  would  be  a  sweet  dream 
of  rest  and  peace,  and  the  nations  would  cease  to 
long  for  heaven. 

But  I  wander  from  my  theme.  St.  Paul  is  a  won- 
derful town.  It  is  put  together  in  solid  blocks  of 
honest  brick  and  stone,  and  has  the  air  of  intending 
to  stay.  Its  post-office  was  established  thirty-six 
years  ago;  and  by  and  by,  when  the  postmaster 
received  a  letter,  he  carried  it  to  Washington,  horse- 
back, to  inquire  what  was  to  be  done  with  it.  Such 
is  the  legend.  Two  frame  houses  were  built  that 
year,  and  several  persons  were  added  to  the  popula- 
tion. A  recent  number  of  the  leading  St.  Paul 
paper,  the  Pioneer  Press,  gives  some  statistics  which 
furnish  a  vivid  contrast  to  that  old  state  of  things, 
to  wit:  Population,  autumn  of  the  present  year 
(1882),  71,000;  number  of  letters  handled,  first  half 
of  the  year,  1,209,387 ;  number  of  houses  built  during 
three-quarters  of  the  year,  989;  their  cost,  $3,186,000. 
The  increase  of  letters  over  the  corresponding  six 
488 


LIFE     ON     THE    MISSISSIPPI 

months  of  last  year  was  fifty  per  cent.  Last  year 
the  new  buildings  added  to  the  city  cost  above 
$4,500,000.  St.  Paul's  strength  lies  in  her  commerce 
— I  mean  his  commerce.  He  is  a  manufacturing  city, 
of  course — all  cities  of  that  region  are — but  he  is  pe- 
culiarly strong  in  the  matter  of  commerce.  Last  year 
his  jobbing  trade  amounted  to  upward  of  $52,000,000. 

He  has  a  custom-house,  and  is  building  a  costly 
capitol  to  replace  the  one  recently  burned — for  he 
is  the  capital  of  the  state.  He  has  churches  with- 
out end ;  and  not  the  cheap  poor  kind,  but  the  kind 
that  the  rich  Protestant  puts  up,  the  kind  that  the 
poor  Irish  "hired  girl"  delights  to  erect.  What  a 
passion  '  for  building  majestic  churches  the  Irish 
hired  girl  has !  It  is  a  fine  thing  for  our  architecture ; 
but  too  often  we  enjoy  her  stately  fanes  without 
giving  her  a  grateful  thought.  In  fact,  instead  of 
reflecting  that  "every  brick  and  every  stone  in  this 
beautiful  edifice  represents  an  ache  or  a  pain,  and 
a  handful  of  sweat,  and  hours  of  heavy  fatigue,  con- 
tributed by  the  back  and  forehead  and  bones  of 
poverty,"  it  is  our  habit  to  forget  these  things  en- 
tirely, and  merely  glorify  the  mighty  temple  itself, 
without  vouchsafing  one  praiseful  thought  to  its 
humble  builder,  whose  rich  heart  and  withered  purse 
it  symbolizes. 

This  is  a  land  of  libraries  and  schools.  St.  Paul 
has  three  public  libraries,  and  they  contain,  in  the 
aggregate,  some  forty  thousand  books.  He  has  one 
hundred  and  sixteen  schoolhouses,  and  pays  out 
more  than  seventy  thousand  dollars  a  year  in  teach- 
ers' salaries. 

489 


MARK    TWAIN 

There  is  an  unusually  fine  railway-station;  so  large 
is  it,  in  fact,  that  it  seemed  somewhat  overdone,  in 
the  matter  of  size,  at  first;  but  at  the  end  of  a  few 
months  it  was  perceived  that  the  mistake  was  dis- 
tinctly the  other  way.  The  error  is  to  be  corrected. 

The  town  stands  on  high  ground;  it  is  about 
seven  hundred  feet  above  the  sea-level.  It  is  so  high 
that  a  wide  view  of  river  and  lowland  is  offered  from 
its  streets. 

It  is  a  very  wonderful  town,  indeed,  and  is  not 
finished  yet.  All  the  streets  are  obstructed  with 
building-material,  and  this  is  being  compacted  into 
houses  as  fast  as  possible,  to  make  room  for  more — 
for  other  people  are  anxious  to  build,  as  soon  as 
they  can  get  the  use  of  the  streets  to  pile  up  their 
bricks  and  stuff  in. 

How  solemn  and  beautiful  is  the  thought  that  the 
earliest  pioneer  of  civilization,  the  van-leader  of 
civilization,  is  never  the  steamboat,  never  the  rail- 
road, never  the  newspaper,  never  the  Sabbath- 
school,  never  the  missionary — but  always  wnisky! 
Such  is  the  case.  Look  history  over;  you  will  see. 
The  missionary  comes  after  the  whisky — I  mean  he 
arrives  after  the  whisky  has  arrived;  next  comes  the 
poor  immigrant,  with  ax  and  hoe  and  rifle;  next,  the 
trader;  next,  the  miscellaneous  rush;  next,  the  gam- 
bler, the  desperado,  the  highwayman,  and  all  their 
kindred  in  sin  of  both  sexes;  and  next,  the  smart 
chap  who  has  bought  up  an  old  grant  that  covers 
all  the  land;  this  brings  the  lawyer  tribe;  the  vigi- 
lance committee  brings  the  undertaker.  All  these 
interests  bring  the  newspaper;  the  newspaper  starts 
490 


LIFE     ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

up  politics  and  a  railroad;  all  hands  turn  to  and 
build  a  church  and  a  jail — and  behold!  civilization  is 
established  forever  in  the  land.  But  whisky,  you 
see,  was  the  van-leader  in  this  beneficent  work.  It 
always  is.  It  was  like  a  foreigner — and  excusable  in 
a  foreigner — to  be  ignorant  of  this  great  truth,  and 
wander  off  into  astronomy  to  borrow  a  symbol.  But 
if  he  had  been  conversant  with  the  facts,  he  would 
have  said : 

Westward  the  Jug  of  Empire  takes  its  way. 

This  great  van-leader  arrived  upon  the  ground 
which  St.  Paul  now  occupies,  in  June,  1837.  Yes,  at 
that  date,  Pierre  Parrant,  a  Canadian,  built  the  first 
cabin,  uncorked  his  jug,  and  began  to  sell  whisky 
to  the  Indians.  The  result  is  before  us. 

All  that  I  have  said  of  the  newness,  briskness, 
swift  progress,  wealth,  intelligence,  fine  and  sub- 
stantial architecture,  and  general  slash  and  go  and 
energy  of  St.  Paul,  will  apply  to  his  near  neighbor, 
Minneapolis — with  the  addition  that  the  latter  is  the 
bigger  of  the  two  cities. 

These  extraordinary  towns  were  ten  miles  apart 
a  few  months  ago,  but  were  growing  so  fast  that  they 
may  possibly  be  joined  now  and  getting  along  under 
a  single  mayor.  At  any  rate,  within  five  years  from 
now  there  will  be  at  least  such  a  substantial  liga- 
ment of  buildings  stretching  between  them  and 
uniting  them  that  a  stranger  will  not  be  able  to  tell 
where  the  one  Siamese  twin  leaves  off  and  the  other 
begins.  Combined,  they  will  then  number  a  popu- 
lation of  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand,  if  they  con- 
491 


MARK    TWAIN 

tinue  to  grow  as  they  are  now  growing.  Thus,  tnis 
center  of  population,  at  the  head  of  Mississippi 
navigation,  will  then  begin  a  rivalry  as  to  numbers 
with  that  center  of  population  at  the  foot  of  it — 
New  Orleans. 

Minneapolis  is  situated  at  the  falls  of  St.  Anthony, 
which  stretch  across  the  river  fifteen  hundred  feet, 
and  have  a  fall  of  eighty-two  feet — a  water-power 
which,  by  art,  has  been  made  of  inestimable  value, 
businesswise,  though  somewhat  to  the  damage  of  the 
Falls  as  a  spectacle,  or  as  a  background  against  which 
to  get  your  photograph  taken. 

Thirty  flouring-mills  turn  out  two  million  barrels 
of  the  very  choicest  of  flour  every  year;  twenty  saw- 
mills produce  two  hundred  million  feet  of  lumber 
annually;  then  there  are  woolen-mills,  cotton-mills, 
paper  and  oil  mills;  and  sash,  nail,  furniture,  barrel, 
and  other  factories,  without  number,  so  to  speak. 
The  great  flouring-mills  here  and  at  St.  Paul  use  the 
"new  process"  and  mash  the  wheat  by  rolling, 
instead  of  grinding  it. 

Sixteen  railroads  meet  in  Minneapolis,  and  sixty- 
five  passenger-trains  arrive  and  depart  daily. 

In  this  place,  as  in  St.  Paul,  journalism  thrives. 
Here  there  are  three  great  dailies,  ten  weeklies,  and 
three  monthlies. 

There  is  a  university,  with  four  hundred  students 
— and,  better  still,  its  good  efforts  are  not  confined 
to  enlightening  the  one  sex.  There  are  sixteen 
public  schools,  with  buildings  which  cost  five  hundred 
thousand  dollars;  there  are  six  thousand  pupils  and 
one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  teachers.  There  are 
492 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

also  seventy  churches  existing,  and  a  lot  more  pro- 
jected. The  banks  aggregate  a  capital  of  three 
million  dollars,  and  the  wholesale  jobbing  trade  of 
the  town  amounts  to  fifty  million  dollars  a  year. 

Near  St.  Paul  and  Minneapolis  are  several  points 
of  interest — Fort  Snelling,  a  fortress  occupying  a 
river  bluff  a  hundred  feet  high;  the  falls  of  Minne- 
haha;  White-bear  Lake,  and  so  forth.  The  beautiful 
falls  of  Minnehaha  are  sufficiently  celebrated — they 
do  not  need  a  lift  from  me,  in  that  direction.  The 
White-bear  Lake  is  less  known.  It  is  a  lovely  sheet 
of  water,  and  is  being  utilized  as  a  summer  resort  by 
the  wealth  and  fashion  of  the  state.  It  has  its  club- 
house, and  its  hotel,  with  the  modern  improvements 
and  conveniences;  its  fine  summer  residences;  and 
plenty  of  fishing,  hunting,  and  pleasant  drives.  There 
are  a  dozen  minor  summer  resorts  around  about 
St.  Paul  and  Minneapolis,  but  the  White-bear  Lake 
is  the  resort.  Connected  with  White-bear  Lake  is  a 
most  idiotic  Indian  legend.  I  would  resist  the 
temptation  to  print  it  here,  if  I  could,  but  the  task 
is  beyond  my  strength.  The  guide-book  names  the 
preserver  of  the  legend,  and  compliments  his  "facile 
pen."  Without  further  comment  or  delay  then,  let 
us  turn  the  said  facile  pen  loose  upon  the  reader: 

A  LEGEND  OP  WHITE-BEAR  LAKE 

Every  spring,  for  perhaps  a  century,  or  as  long  as  there  has 
been  a  nation  of  red  men,  an  island  in  the  middle  of  White-bear 
Lake  has  been  visited  by  a  band  of  Indians  for  the  purpose  of 
making  maple-sugar. 

Tradition  says  that  many  springs  ago,  while  upon  this  island, 
a  young  warrior  loved  and  wooed  the  daughter  of  his  chief,  and 

493 


MARK     TWAIN 

it  is  said,  also,  the  maiden  loved  the  warrior.  He  had  again 
and  again  been  refused  her  hand  by  her  parents,  the  old  chief 
alleging  that  he  was  no  brave,  and  his  old  consort  called  him  a 
woman! 

The  sun  had  again  set  upon  the  "sugar-bush,"  and  the  bright 
moon  rose  high  in  the  bright  blue  heavens,  when  the  young 
warrior  took  down  his  flute  and  went  out  alone,  once  more  to 
sing  the  story  of  his  love;  the  mild  breeze  gently  moved  the  two 
gay  feathers  in  his  head-dress,  and  as  he  mounted  on  the  trunk 
of  a  leaning  tree,  the  damp  snow  fell  from  his  feet  heavily.  As 
he  raised  his  flute  to  his  lips,  his  blanket  slipped  from  his  well- 
formed  shoulders,  and  lay  partly  on  the  snow  beneath.  He 
began  his  weird,  wild  love  song,  but  soon  felt  that  he  was  cold, 
and  as  he  reached  back  for  his  blanket,  some  unseen  hand  laid 
it  gently  on  his  shoulders;  it  was  the  hand  of  his  love,  his  guardian 
angel.  She  took  her  place  beside  him,  and  for  the  present  they 
were  happy;  for  the  Indian  has  a  heart  to  love,  and  in  this 
pride  he  is  as  noble  as  in  his  own  freedom,  which  makes  hurt  the 
child  of  the  forest.  As  the  legend  runs,  a  large  white  bear, 
thinking,  perhaps,  that  polar  snows  and  dismal  winter  weather 
extended  everywhere,  took  up  his  journey  southward.  He  at 
length  approached  the  northern  shore  of  the  lake  which  now 
bears  his  name,  walked  down  the  bank,  and  made  his  way 
noiselessly  through  the  deep  heavy  snow  toward  the  island. 
It  was  the  same  spring  ensuing  that  the  lovers  met.  They  had 
left  their  first  retreat,  and  were  now  seated  among  the  branches 
of  a  large  elm  which  hung  far  over  the  lake  (The  same  tree  is 
still  standing,  and  excites  universal  curiosity  and  interest.)  For 
fear  of  being  detected  they  talked  almost  in  a  whisper,  and  now, 
that  they  might  get  back  to  camp  in  good  time  and  thereby 
avoid  suspicion,  they  were  just  rising  to  return,  when  the  maiden 
uttered  a  shriek  which  was  heard  at  the  camp,  and  bounding 
toward  the  young  brave,  she  caught  his  blanket,  but  missed  the 
direction  of  her  foot  and  fell,  bearing  the  blanket  with  her  into 
the  great  arms  of  the  ferocious  monster.  Instantly  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  of  the  band  were  upon  the  bank,  but  all  un- 
armed. Cries  and  wailings  went  up  from  every  mouth.  What 
was  to  be  done?  In  the  mean  time  this  white  and  savage  beast 
held  the  breathless  maiden  in  his  huge  grasp,  and  fondled  with 
his  precious  prey  as  if  he  were  used  to  scenes  like  this.  One 
deafening  yell  from  the  lover  warrior  is  heard  above  the  cries 
494 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

of  hundreds  of  his  tribe,  and  dashing  away  to  his  wigwam  he 
grasps  his  faithful  knife,  returns  almost  at  a  single  bound  to  the 
scene  of  fear  and  fright,  rushes  out  along  the  leaning  tree  to  the 
spot  where  his  treasure  fell,  and  springing  with  the  fury  of  a 
mad  panther,  pounced  upon  his  prey.  The  animal  turned,  and 
with  one  stroke  of  his  huge  paw  brought  the  lovers  heart  to 
heart,  but  the  next  moment  the  warrior,  with  one  plunge  of  the 
blade  of  his  knife,  opened  the  crimson  sluices  of  death,  and  the 
dying  bear  relaxed  his  hold. 

That  night  there  was  no  more  sleep  for  the  band  or  the  lovers, 
and  as  the  young  and  the  old  danced  about  the  carcass  of  the 
dead  monster,  the  gallant  warrior  was  presented  with  another 
plume,  and  ere  another  moon  had  set  he  had  a  living  treasure 
added  to  his  heart.  Their  children  for  many  years  played  upon 
the  skin  of  the  white  bear — from  which  the  lake  derives  its 
name — and  the  maiden  and  the  brave  remembered  long  the 
fearful  scene  and  rescue  that  made  them  one,  for  Kis-se-me-pa 
and  Ka-go-ka  could  never  forget  their  fearful  encounter  with 
the  huge  monster  that  came  so  near  sending  them  to  the  happy 
hunting-ground. 

It  is  a  perplexing  business.  First,  she  fell  down 
out  of  the  tree — she  and  the  blanket;  and  the  bear 
caught  her  and  fondled  her — her  and  the  blanket; 
then  she  fell  up  into  the  tree  again — leaving  the 
blanket ;  meantime  the  lover  goes  war-whooping  home 
and  comes  back  "heeled,"  climbs  the  tree,  jumps 
down  on  the  bear,  the  girl  jumps  down  after  him — 
apparently,  for  she  was  up  the  tree — resumes  her 
place  in  the  bear's  arms  along  with  the  blanket,  the 
lover  rams  his  knife  into  the  bear,  and  saves — whom  ? 
The  blanket?  No— nothing  of  the  sort.  You  get 
yourself  all  worked  up  and  excited  about  that  blan- 
ket, and  then  all  of  a  sudden,  just  when  a  happy 
climax  seems  imminent,  you  are  let  down  flat — 
nothing  saved  but  the  girl!  Whereas,  one  is  not 
interested  in  the  girl ;  she  is  not  the  prominent  feature 
495 


MARK    TWAIN 

of  the  legend.  Nevertheless,  there  you  are  left,  and 
there  you  must  remain;  for  if  you  live  a  thousand 
years  you  will  never  know  who  got  the  blanket.  A 
dead  man  could  get  up  a  better  legend  than  this  one. 
I  don't  mean  a  fresh  dead  man  either;  I  mean  a  man 
that's  been  dead  weeks  and  weeks. 

We  struck  the  home-trail  now,  and  in  a  few  hours 
were  in  that  astonishing  Chicago — a  city  where  they 
are  always  rubbing  the  lamp,  and  fetching  up  the 
genii,  and  contriving  and  achieving  new  impossi- 
bilities. It  is  hopeless  for  the  occasional  visitor  to 
try  to  keep  up  with  Chicago — she  outgrows  his 
prophecies  faster  than  he  can  make  them.  She  is 
always  a  novelty,  for  she  is  never  the  Chicago  you 
saw  when  you  passed  through  the  last  time.  The 
Pennsylvania  road  rushed  us  to  New  York  without 
missing  schedule  time  ten  minutes  anywhere  on  the 
route;  and  there  ended  one  of  the  most  enjoyable 
five-thousand-mile  journeys  I  have  ever  had  the  good 
fortune  to  make. 


APPENDIX 


[From  the  New  Orleans  Times-Democrat  of  March  29, 1882] 

VOYAGE    OF    THE    "TIMES-DEMOCRAT'S"   RELIEF- 
BOAT  THROUGH  THE  INUNDATED  REGIONS 

IT  was  nine  o'clock  Thursday  morning  when  the  Susie  left  the 
Mississippi  and  entered  Old  River,  or  what  is  now  called  the 
mouth  of  the  Red.  Ascending  on  the  left,  a  flood  was  pouring 
in  through  and  over  the  levees  on  the  Chandler  plantation,  the 
most  northern  point  in  Point  Coupee  parish.  The  water  com- 
pletely covered  the  place,  although  the  levees  had  given  way 
but  a  short  time  before.  The  stock  had  been  gathered  in  a 
large  flatboat,  where,  without  food,  as  we  passed,  the  animals 
were  huddled  together,  waiting  for  a  boat  to  tow  them  off.  On 
the  right-hand  side  of  the  river  is  TurnbulTs  Island,  and  on  it 
is  a  large  plantation  which  formerly  was  pronounced  one  of 
the  most  fertile  in  the  state.  The  water  has  hitherto  allowed 
it  to  go  scot-free  in  usual  floods,  but  now  broad  sheets  of  water 
told  only  where  fields  were.  The  top  of  the  protective  levee 
could  be  seen  here  and  there,  but  nearly  all  of  it  was  submerged. 

The  trees  have  put  on  a  greener  foliage  since  the  water  has 
poured  in,  and  the  woods  look  bright  and  fresh,  but  this  pleasant 
aspect  to  the  eye  is  neutralized  by  the  interminable  waste  of 
water.  We  pass  mile  after  mile,  and  it  is  nothing  but  trees 
standing  up  to  their  branches  in  water.  A  water-turkey  now 
and  again  rises  and  flies  ahead  into  the  long  avenue  of  silence. 
A  pirogue  sometimes  flits  from  the  bushes  and  crosses  the  Red 
River  on  its  way  out  to  the  Mississippi,  but  the  sad-faced  pad- 
497 


MARK     TWAIN 

dlers  never  turn  their  heads  to  look  at  our  boat.  The  puffing 
of  the  boat  is  music  in  this  gloom,  which  affects  one  most  curi- 
ously. It  is  not  the  gloom  of  deep  forests  or  dark  caverns,  but 
a  peculiar  kind  of  solemn  silence  and  impressive  awe  that  holds 
one  perforce  to  its  recognition.  We  passed  two  negro  families 
on  a  raft  tied  up  in  the  willows  this  morning.  They  were 
evidently  of  the.  well-to-do  class,  as  they  had  a  supply  of  meal 
and  three  or  four  hogs  with  them.  Their  rafts  were  about 
twenty  feet  square,  and  in  front  of  an  improvised  shelter  earth 
had  been  placed,  on  which  they  built  their  fire. 

The  current  running  down  the  Atchafalaya  was  very  swift,  the 
Mississippi  showing  a  predilection  in  that  direction,  which  needs 
only  to  be  seen  to  enforce  the  opinion  of  that  river's  desperate 
endeavors  to  find  a  short  way  to  the  Gulf.  Small  boats,  skiffs, 
pirogues,  etc.,  are  in  great  demand,  and  many  have  been  stolen 
by  piratical  negroes,  who  take  them  where  they  will  bring  the 
greatest  price.  From  what  was  told  me  by  Mr.  C.  P.  Ferguson, 
a  planter  near  Red  River  Landing,  whose  place  had  just  gone 
under,  there  is  much  suffering  in  the  rear  of  that  place.  The 
negroes  had  given  up  all  thoughts  of  a  creVasse  there,  as  the 
upper  levee  had  stood  so  long,  and  when  it  did  come  they  were 
at  its  mercy.  On  Thursday  a  number  were  taken  out  of  trees 
and  off  cabin  roofs  and  brought  in,  many  yet  remaining. 

One  does  not  appreciate  the  sight  of  earth  until  he  has  traveled 
through  a  flood.  At  sea  one  does  not  expect  or  look  for  it,  but 
here  with  fluttering  leaves,  shadowy  forest  aisles,  housetops 
barely  visible,  it  is  expected.  In  fact,  a  graveyard,  if  the 
mounds  were  above  water,  would  be  appreciated.  The  river 
here  is  known  only  because  there  is  an  opening  in  the  trees,  and 
that  is  all.  It  is  in  width,  from  Fort  Adams  on  the  left  bank 
of  the  Mississippi  to  the  bank  of  Rapides  Parish,  a  distance  of 
about  sixty  miles.  A  large  portion  of  this  was  under  cultivation, 
particularly  along  the  Mississippi  and  back  of  the  Red.  When 
Red  River  proper  was  entered,  a  strong  current  was  running 
directly  across  it,  pursuing  the  same  direction  as  that  of  the 
Mississippi. 

After  a  run  of  some  hours,  Black  River  was  reached.  Hardly 
was  it  entered  before  signs  of  suffering  became  visible.  All  the 
willows  along  the  banks  were  stripped  of  their  leaves.  One 
man,  whom  your  correspondent  spoke  to,  said  that  he  had  had 
one  hundred  and  fifty  head  of  cattle  and  one  hundred  head  of 
498 


LIFE    ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

hogs.  At  the  first  appearance  of  water  he  had  started  to  drive 
them  to  the  highlands  of  Avoyelles,  thirty-five  miles  off,  but  he 
lost  fifty  head  of  the  beef  cattle  and  sixty  hogs.  Black  River  is 
quite  picturesque,  even  if  its  shores  are  under  water.  A  dense 
growth  of  ash,  oak,  gum,  and  hickory  makes  the  shores  almost 
impenetrable,  and  where  one  can  get  a  view  down  some  avenue 
in  the  trees,  only  the  dim  outlines  of  distant  trunks  can  be  barely 
distinguished  in  the  gloom. 

A  few  miles  up  this  river,  the  depth  of  water  on  the  banks 
was  fully  eight  feet,  and  on  all  sides  could  be  seen,  still  holding 
against  the  strong  current,  the  tops  of  cabins.  Here  and  there 
one  overturned  was  surrounded  by  driftwood,  forming  the  nucleus 
of  possibly  some  future  island. 

In  order  to  save  coal,  as  it  was  impossible  to  get  that  fuel 
at  any  point  to  be  touched  during  the  expedition,  a  lookout 
was  kept  for  a  wood-pile.  On  rounding  a  point  a  pirogue, 
skilfully  paddled  by  a  youth,  shot  out,  and  in  its  bow  was  a 
girl  of  fifteen,  of  fair  face,  beautiful  black  eyes,  and  demure 
manners.  The  boy  asked  for  a  paper,  which  was  thrown  to 
him,  and  the  couple  pushed  their  tiny  craft  out  into  the  swell 
of  the  boat. 

Presently  a  little  girl,  not  certainly  over  twelve  years,  paddled 
out  in  the  smallest  little  canoe  and  handled  it  with  all  the  deft- 
ness of  an  old  voyageur.  The  little  one  looked  more  like  an 
Indian  than  a  white  child,  and  laughed  when  asked  if  she  were 
afraid.  She  had  been  raised  in  a  pirogue  and  could  go  anywhere. 
She  was  bound  out  to  pick  willow  leaves  for  the  stock,  and  she 
pointed  to  a  house  near  by  with  water  three  inches  deep  on  the 
floors.  At  its  back  door  was  moored  a  raft  about  thirty  feet 
square,  with  a  sort  of  fence  built  upon  it,  and  inside  of  this  some 
sixteen  cows  and  twenty  hogs  were  standing.  The  family  did 
not  complain,  except  on  account  of  losing  their  stock,  and 
promptly  brought  a  supply  of  wood  in  a  flat. 

From  this  point  to  the  Mississippi  River,  fifteen  miles,  there 
is  not  a  spot  of  earth  above  water,  and  to  the  westward  for 
thirty-five  miles  there  is  nothing  but  the  river's  flood.  Black 
River  had  risen  during  Thursday,  the  23d,  one  and  three- 
quarters  inches,  and  was  going  up  at  night  still.  As  we 
progress  up  the  river  habitations  become  more  frequent,  but 
are  yet  still  miles  apart.  Nearly  all  of  them  are  deserted, 
and  the  outhouses  floated  off.  To  add  to  the  gloom,  almost 
499 


MARK     TWAIN 

every  living  thing  seems  to  have  departed,  and  not  a  whistle 
of  a  bird  nor  the  bark  of  a  squirrel  can  be  heard  in  the 
solitude.  Sometimes  a  morose  gar  will  throw  his  tail  aloft 
and  disappear  in  the  river,  but  beyond  this  everything  is 
quiet — the  quiet  of  desolation.  Down  the  river  floats  now  a 
neatly  whitewashed  hen-house,  then  a  cluster  of  neatly  split 
fence-rails,  or  a  door  and  a  bloated  carcass,  solemnly  guarded  by 
a  pair  of  buzzards — the  only  bird  to  be  seen — which  feast  on 
the  carcass  as  it  bears  them  along.  A  picture-frame,  in  which 
there  was  a  cheap  lithograph  of  a  soldier  on  horseback,  as  it 
floated  on  told  of  some  hearth  invaded  by  the  water  and  despoiled 
of  this  ornament. 

At  dark,  as  it  was  not  prudent  to  run,  a  place  alongside  the 
woods  was  hunted,  and  to  a  tall  gum  tree  the  boat  was  made 
fast  for  the  night. 

A  pretty  quarter  of  the  moon  threw  a  pleasant  light  over  forest 
and  river,  making  a  picture  that  would  be  a  delightful  piece  of 
landscape  study,  could  an  artist  only  hold  it  down  to  his  canvas. 
The  motion  of  the  engines  had  ceased,  the  puffing  of  the  escaping 
steam  was  stilled,  and  the  enveloping  silence  closed  upon  us,  and 
such  silence  it  was!  Usually  in  a  forest  at  night  one  can  hear 
the  piping  of  frogs,  the  hum  of  insects,  or  the  dropping  of  limbs ; 
but  here  Nature  was  dumb.  The  dark  recesses,  those  aisles 
into  this  cathedral,  gave  forth  no  sound,  and  even  the  ripplings 
of  the  current  die  away. 

At  daylight,  Friday  morning,  all  hands  were  up,  and  up  the 
Black  we  started.  The  morning  was  a  beautiful  one,  and  the 
river,  which  is  remarkably  straight,  put  on  its  loveliest  garb. 
The  blossoms  of  the  haw  perfumed  the  air  deliriously,  and  a 
few  birds  whistled  blithely  along  the  banks.  The  trees  were 
larger,  and  the  forest  seemed  of  older  growth  than  below.  More 
fields  were  passed  than  nearer  the  mouth,  but  the  same  scene 
presented  itself — smokehouses  drifting  out  in  the  pastures,  negro 
quarters  anchored  in  confusion  against  some  oak  and  the  modest 
residence  just  showing  its  eaves  above  water.  The  sun  came 
up  in  a  glory  of  carmine,  and  the  trees  were  brilliant  in  their 
varied  shades  of  green.  Not  a  foot  of  soil  is  to  be  seen  any- 
where, and  the  water  is  apparently  growing  deeper  and  deeper, 
for  it  reaches  up  to  the  branches  of  the  largest  trees.  All  along, 
the  bordering  willows  have  been  denuded  of  leaves,  showing  how 
long  the  people  have  been  at  work  gathering  this  fodder  for 


LIFE     ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

their  animals.  An  old  man  in  a  pirogue  was  asked  how  the 
willow  leaves  agreed  with  his  cattle.  He  stopped  in  his  work, 
and  with  an  ominous  shake  of  his  head  replied:  "Well,  sir,  it's 
enough  to  keep  warmth  in  their  bodies,  and  that's  all  we  expect, 
but  it's  hard  on  the  hogs,  particularly  the  small  ones.  They  is 
dropping  off  powerful  fast,  but  what  can  you  do?  It's  all 
we've  got." 

At  thirty  miles  above  the  mouth  of  Black  River  the  water 
extends  from  Natchez  on  the  Mississippi  across  to  the  pine  hills 
of  Louisiana,  a  distance  of  seventy-three  miles,  and  there  is 
hardly  a  spot  that  is  not  ten  feet  under  it.  The  tendency  of  the 
current  up  the  Black  is  toward  the  west.  In  fact,  so  much  is 
this  the  case,  the  waters  of  Red  River  have  been  driven  down 
from  toward  the  Calcasieu  country,  and  the  waters  of  the  Black 
enter  the  Red  some  fifteen  miles  above  the  mouth  of  the  former, 
a  thing  never  before  seen  by  even  the  oldest  steamboatmen. 
The  water  now  in  sight  of  us  is  entirely  from  the  Mississippi. 

Up  to  Trinity,  or  rather  Troy,  which  is  but  a  short  distance 
below,  the  people  have  nearly  all  moved  out,  those  remaining 
having  enough  for  their  present  personal  needs.  Their  cattle, 
though,  are  suffering  and  dying  off  quite  fast,  as  the  confinement 
on  rafts  and  the  food  they  get  breed  disease. 

After  a  short  stop  we  started,  and  soon  came  to  a  section  where 
there  were  many  open  fields  and  cabins  thickly  scattered  about. 
Here  were  seen  more  pictures  of  distress.  On  the  inside  of  the 
houses  the  inmates  had  built  on  boxes  a  scaffold  on  which  they 
placed  the  furniture.  The  bedposts  were  sawed  off  on  top,  as 
the  ceiling  was  not  more  than  four  feet  from  the  improvised 
floor.  The  buildings  looked  very  insecure,  and  threaten  every 
moment  to  float  off.  Near  the  houses  were  cattle  standing 
breast-high  in  the  water,  perfectly  impassive.  They  did  not 
move  in  their  places,  but  stood  patiently  waiting  for  help  to 
come.  The  sight  was  a  distressing  one,  and  the  poor  creatures 
will  be  sure  to  die  unless  speedily  rescued.  Cattle  differ  from 
horses  in  this  peculiar  quality.  A  horse,  after  finding  no  relief 
comes,  will  swim  off  in  search  of  food,  whereas  a  beef  will  stand 
in  its  tracks  until  with  exhaustion  it  drops  in  the  water  and 
drowns. 

At  half  past  twelve  o'clock  a  hail  was  given  from  a  flatboat 
inside  the  line  of  the  bank.  Rounding  to  we  ran  alongside,  and 
General  York  stepped  aboard.  He  was  just  then  engaged  in 


MARK    TWAIN 

getting  off  stock,  and  welcomed  the  Times-Democrat  boat 
heartily,  as  he  said  there  was  much  need  for  her.  He  said  that 
the  distress  was  not  exaggerated  in  the  least.  People  were  in 
a  condition  it  was  difficult  even  for  one  to  imagine.  The  water 
was  so  high  there  was  great  danger  of  their  houses  being  swept 
away.  It  had  already  risen  so  high  that  it  was  approaching  the 
eaves,  and  when  it  reaches  this  point  there  is  always  imminent 
risk  of  their  being  swept  away.  If  this  occurs,  there  will  be  great 
loss  of  life.  The  general  spoke  of  the  gallant  work  of  many  of  the 
people  in  their  attempts  to  save  their  stock,  but  thought  that 
fully  twenty-five  per  cent,  had  perished.  Already  twenty-five 
hundred  people  had  received  rations  from  Troy,  on  Black 
River,  and  he  had  towed  out  a  great  many  cattle,  but  a  very 
great  quantity  remained  and  were  in  dire  need.  The  water  was 
now  eighteen  inches  higher  than  in  1874,  and  there  was  no  land 
between  Vidalia  and  the  hills  of  Catahoula. 

At  two  o'clock  the  Susie  reached  Troy,  sixty-five  miles  above 
the  mouth  of  Black  River.  Here  on  the  left  comes  in  Little 
River;  just  beyond  that  the  Ouachita,  and  on  the  right  the 
Tensas.  These  three  rivers  form  the  Black  River.  Troy,  or 
a  portion  of  it,  is  situated  on  and  around  three  large  Indian 
mounds,  circular  in  shape,  which  rise  above  the  present  water 
about  twelve  feet.  They  are  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet 
in  diameter,  and  are  about  two  hundred  yards  apart.  The 
houses  are  all  built  between  these  mounds,  and  hence  are  all 
flooded  to  a  depth  of  eighteen  inches  on  their  floors. 

These  elevations,  built  by  the  aborigines  hundreds  of  years 
ago,  are  the  only  points  of  refuge  for  miles.  When  we  arrived 
we  found  them  crowded  with  stock,  all  of  which  was  thin  and 
hardly  able  to  stand  up.  They  were  mixed  together,  sheep, 
hogs,  horses,  mules,  and  cattle.  One  of  these  mounds  has  been 
used  for  many  years  as  the  graveyard,  and  to-day  we  saw 
ttenuated  cows  lying  against  the  marble  tombstones,  chewing 
their  cud  in  contentment,  after  a  meal  of  corn  furnished  by 
General  York.  Here,  as  below,  the  remarkable  skill  of  the 
women  and  girls  in  the  management  of  the  smaller  pirogues 
was  noticed.  Children  were  paddling  about  in  these  most 
ticklish  crafts  with  all  the  nonchalance  of  adepts. 

General  York  has  put  into  operation  a  perfect  system  in 
regard  to  furnishing  relief.  He  makes  a  personal  inspection  of 
the  place  where  it  is  asked,  sees  what  is  necessary  to  be  done, 
502 


LIFE     ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

and  then,  having  two  boats  chartered,  with  flats,  sends  them 
promptly  to  the  place,  when  the  cattle  are  loaded  and  towed  to 
the  pine  hills  and  uplands  of  Catahoula.  He  has  made  Troy 
his  headquarters,  and  to  this  point  boats  come  for  their  supply 
of  feed  for  cattle.  On  the  opposite  side  of  Little  River,  which 
branches  to  the  left  out  of  Black,  and  between  it  and  the 
Ouachita,  is  situated  the  town  of  Trinity,  which  is  hourly 
threatened  with  destruction.  It  is  much  lower  than  Troy,  and 
the  water  is  eight  and  nine  feet  deep  in  the  houses.  A  strong 
current  sweeps  through  it,  and  it  is  remarkable  that  all  of  its 
houses  have  not  gone  before.  The  residents  of  both  Troy  and 
Trinity  have  been  cared  for,  yet  some  of  their  stock  have  to  be 
furnished  with  food. 

As  soon  as  the  Susie  reached  Troy  she  was  turned  over  to 
General  York,  and  placed  at  his  disposition  to  carry  out  the 
work  of  relief  more  rapidly.  Nearly  all  her  supplies  were 
landed  on  one  of  the  mounds  to  lighten  her,  and  she  was  headed 
down-stream  to  relieve  those  below.  At  Tom  Hooper's  place, 
a  few  miles  from  Troy,  a  large  flat,  with  about  fifty  head  of 
stock  on  board,  was  taken  in  tow.  The  animals  were  fed,  and 
soon  regained  some  strength.  To-day  we  go  on  Little  River, 
where  the  suffering  is  greatest. 


DOWN  BLACK  RIVER 

SATURDAY  EVENING,  March  25. 

We  started  down  Black  River  quite  early,  under  the  direction 
of  General  York,  to  bring  out  what  stock  could  be  reached. 
Going  down-river  a  flat  in  tow  was  left  in  a  central  locality, 
and  from  there  men  poled  her  back  in  the  rear  of  plantations, 
picking  up  the  animals  wherever  found.  In  the  loft  of  a  gin- 
house  there  were  seventeen  head  found,  and,  after  a  gangway 
was  built,  they  were  led  down  into  the  flat  without  difficulty. 
Taking  a  skiff  with  the  general,  your  reporter  was  pulled  up 
to  a  little  house  of  two  rooms,  in  which  the  water  was  standing 
two  feet  on  the  floors.  In  one  of  the  large  rooms  were  huddled 
the  horses  and  cows  of  the  place,  while  in  the  other  the  Widow 
Taylor  and  her  son  were  seated  on  a  scaffold  raised  on  the  floor. 
One  or  two  dugouts  were  drifting  about  in  the  room,  ready  to  be 
put  in  service  at  any  time.  When  the  flat  was  brought  up,  ths 
503 


MARK    TWAIN 

side  of  the  house  was  cut  away  as  the  only  means  of  getting 
the  animals  out,  and  the  cattle  were  driven  on  board  the  boat. 
General  York,  in  this  as  in  every  case,  inquired  if  the  family 
desired  to  leave,  informing  them  that  Major  Burke  of  the  Times- 
Democrat  has  sent  the  Susie  up  for  that  purpose.  Mrs.  Taylor 
said  she  thanked  Major  Burke,  but  she  would  try  and  hold  out. 
The  remarkable  tenacity  of  the  people  here  to  their  homes  is 
beyond  all  comprehension.  Just  below,  at  a  point  sixteen  miles 
from  Troy,  information  was  received  that  the  house  of  Mr.  Tom 
Ellis  was  in  danger,  and  his  family  were  all  in  it.  We  steamed 
there  immediately,  and  a  sad  picture  was  presented.  Looking 
out  of  the  half  of  the  window  left  above  water  was  Mrs.  Ellis, 
who  is  in  feeble  health,  while  at  the  door  were  her  seven  chil- 
dren, the  oldest  not  fourteen  years.  One  side  of  the  house  was 
given  up  to  the  work-animals,  some  twelve  head,  besides  hogs. 
In  the  next  room  the  family  lived,  the  water  coming  within 
two  inches  of  the  bedrail.  The  stove  was  below  water,  and  the 
cooking  was  done  on  a  fire  on  top  of  it.  The  house  threatened 
to  give  way  at  any  moment;  one  end  of  it  was  sinking,  and,  in 
fact,  the  building  looked  like  a  mere  shell.  As  the  boat  rounded 
to,  Mr.  Ellis  came  out  in  a  dugout,  and  General  York  told  him 
that  he  had  come  to  his  relief;  that  the  Times-Democrat  boat  was 
at  his  service  and  would  remove  his  family  at  once  to  the  hills, 
and  on  Monday  a  flat  would  take  out  his  stock,  as,  until  that 
time,  they  would  be  busy.  Notwithstanding  the  deplorable 
situation  himself  and  family  were  in,  Mr.  Ellis  did  not  want 
to  leave.  He  said  he  thought  he  would  wait  until  Monday,  and 
take  the  risk  of  his  house  falling.  The  children  around  the  door 
looked  perfectly  contented,  seeming  to  care  little  for  the  danger 
they  were  in.  These  are  but  two  instances  of  the  many.  After 
weeks  of  privation  and  suffering  people  still  cling  to  their  houses, 
and  leave  only  when  there  is  not  room  between  the  water  and 
the  ceiling  to  build  a  scaffold  on  which  to  stand.  It  seemed 
to  be  incomprehensible,  yet  the  love  for  the  old  place  was 
stronger  than  that  for  safety. 

After  leaving  the  Ellis  place,  the  next  spot  touched  at  was 
the  Oswald  place.  Here  the  flat  was  towed  alongside  the  gin- 
house,  where  there  were  fifteen  head  standing  in  water;  and 
yet,  as  they  stood  on  scaffolds,  their  heads  were  above  the  top 
of  the  entrance.  It  was  found  impossible  to  get  them  out  with- 
out cutting  away  a  portion  of  the  front;  and  so  axes  were  brought 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

into  requisition  and  a  gap  made.  After  much  labor  the  horses 
and  mules  were  securely  placed  on  the  fiat. 

At  each  place  we  stop  there  are  always  three,  four,  or  more 
dugouts  arriving,  bringing  information  of  stock  in  other  places 
in  need.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  a  great  many  had 
driven  apart  of  their  stock  to  the  hills  some  time  ago,  there  yet 
remains  a  large  quantity,  which  General  York,  who  is  work- 
ing with  indomitable  energy,  will  get  landed  in  the  pine  hills 
by  Tuesday. 

All  along  Black  River  the  Susie  has  been  visited  by  scores  of 
planters,  whose  tales  are  the  repetition  of  those  already  heard 
of  suffering  and  loss.  An  old  planter,  who  has  lived  on  the  river 
since  1844,  said  there  never  was  such  a  rise,  and  he  was  satisfied 
more  than  one-quarter  of  the  stock  has  been  lost.  Luckily  the 
people  cared  first  for  their  work-stock,  and,  when  they  could 
find  it,  horses  and  mules  were  housed  in  a  place  of  safety.  The 
rise,  which  still  continues  and  was  two  inches  last  night,  compels 
them  to  get  them  out  to  the  hills;  hence  it  is  that  the  work  of 
General  York  is  of  such  a  great  value.  From  daylight  to 
late  at  night  he  is  going  this  way  and  that,  cheering  by  his 
kindly  words  and  directing  with  calm  judgment  what  is  to  be 
done. 

One  unpleasant  story,  of  a  certain  merchant  in  New  Orleans, 
is  told  all  along  the  river.  It  appears  for  some  years  past  the 
planters  have  been  dealing  with  this  individual,  and  many  of 
them  had  balances  in  his  hands.  When  the  overflow  came 
they  wrote  for  coffee,  for  meal,  and,  in  fact,  for  such  Kttle 
necessities  as  were  required.  No  response  to  these  letters  came, 
and  others  were  written,  and  yet  these  old  customers,  with 
plantations  under  water,  were  refused  even  what  was  necessary 
to  sustain  life.  It  is  needless  to  say  he  is  not  popular  now  on 
Black  River. 

The  hills  spoken  of  as  the  place  of  refuge  for  the  people  and 
stock  on  Black  River  are  in  Catahoula  parish,  twenty-four  miles 
from  Black  River. 

After  filling  the  flat  with  cattle  we  took  on  board  the  family 
of  T.  S.  Hooper,  seven  in  number,  who  could  not  longer  remain 
in  their  dwelling,  and  we  are  now  taking  them  up  Little  River 
to  the  hills. 


SOS 


MARK    TWAIN 

THE  FLOOD  STILL  RISING 

TROY,  March  27,  1882,  noon. 

The  flood  here  is  rising  about  three  and  a  half  inches  every 
twenty-four  hours,  and  rains  have  set  in  which  will  increase  this. 
General  York  feels  now  that  our  efforts  ought  to  be  directed 
toward  saving  life,  as  the  increase  of  the  water  has  jeopardized 
many  houses.  We  intend  to  go  up  the  Tensas  in  a  few  minutes, 
and  then  we  will  return  and  go  down  Black  River  to  take  off 
families.  There  is  a  lack  of  steam  transportation  here  to  meet 
the  emergency.  The  general  has  three  boats  chartered  with 
flats  in  tow,  but  the  demand  for  these  to  tow  out  stock  is  greater 
than  they  can  meet  with  promptness.  All  are  working  night 
and  day,  and  the  Susie  hardly  stops  for  more  than  an  hour 
anywhere.  The  rise  has  placed  Trinity  in  a  dangerous  plight, 
and  momentarily  it  is  expected  that  some  of  the  houses  will 
float  off.  Troy  is  a  little  higher,  yet  all  are  in  the  water.  Re- 
ports have  come  in  that  a  woman  and  child  have  been  washed 
away  below  here,  and  two  cabins  floated  off.  Their  occupants 
are  the  same  who  refused  to  come  off  day  before  yesterday. 
One  would  not  believe  the  utter  passiveness  of  the  people. 

As  yet  no  news  has  been  received  of  the  steamer  Delia,  which 
is  supposed  to  be  the  one  sunk  in  yesterday's  storm  on  Lake 
Catahoula.  She  is  due  here  now,  but  has  not  arrived.  Even 
the  mail  here  is  most  uncertain,  and  this  I  send  by  skiff  to 
Natchez  to  get  it  to  you.  It  is  impossible  to  get  accurate  data 
as  to  past  crops,  etc.,  as  those  who  know  much  about  the  matter 
have  gone,  and  those  who  remain  are  not  well  versed  in  the  pro- 
duction of  this  section. 

General  York  desires  me  to  say  that  the  amount  of  rations 
formerly  sent  should  be  duplicated  and  sent  at  once.  It  is 
impossible  to  make  any  estimate,  for  the  people  are  fleeing  to 
the  hills,  so  rapid  is  the  rise.  The  residents  here  are  in  a  state 
of  commotion  that  can  only  be  appreciated  when  seen,  and 
complete  demoralization  has  set  in. 

If  rations  are  drawn  for  any  particular  section  hereabouts 
they  would  not  be  certain  to  be  distributed,  so  everything  should 
be  sent  to  Troy  as  a  center,  and  the  general  will  have  it  properly 
disposed  of.  He  has  sent  for  one  hundred  tents,  and,  if  all 
go  to  the  hills  who  are  in  motion  now,  two  hundred  will  be 
required. 

506 


B 


THE  condition  of  this  rich  valley  of  the  Lower  Mississippi, 
immediately  after  and  since  the  war,  constituted  one  of  the 
disastrous  effects  of  war  most  to  be  deplored.  Fictitious  prop- 
erty in  slaves  was  not  only  righteously  destroyed,  but  very  much 
of  the  work  which  had  depended  upon  the  slave  labor  was  also 
destroyed  or  greatly  impaired,  especially  the  levee  system. 

It  might  have  been  expected,  by  those  who  have  not  investi- 
gated the  subject,  that  such  important  improvements  as  the 
construction  and  maintenance  of  the  levees  would  have  been 
assumed  at  once  by  the  several  states.  But  what  can  the  state 
do  where  the  people  are  under  subjection  to  rates  of  interest 
ranging  from  eighteen  to  thirty  per  cent.,  and  are  also  under 
the  necessity  of  pledging  their  crops  in  advance  even  of  planting, 
at  these  rates,  for  the  privilege  of  purchasing  all  of  their  sup- 
plies at  one  hundred  per  cent,  profit? 

-  It  has  needed  but  little  attention  to  make  it  perfectly  obvious 
that  the  control  of  the  Mississippi  River,  if  undertaken  at  all, 
must  be  undertaken  by  the  national  government,  and  cannot 
be  compassed  by  states..  The  river  must  be  treated  as  a  unit; 
its  control  cannot  be  compassed  under  a  divided  or  separate 
system  of  administration. 

Neither  are  the  states  especially  interested  competent  to 
combine  among  themselves  for  the  necessary  operations.  The 
work  must  begin  far  up  the  river;  at  least  as  far  as  Cairo,  if 
not  beyond,  and  must  be  conducted  upon  a  consistent  general 
plan  throughout  the  course  of  the  river. 

It  does  not  need  technical  or  scientific  knowledge  to  compre- 
hend the  elements  of  the  case,  if  one  will  give  a  little  time  and 
attention  to  the  subject;  and  when  a  Mississippi  River  com- 
mission has  been  constituted,  as  the  existing  commission  is,  of 
thoroughly  able  men  of  different  walks  in  life,  may  it  not  be 
suggested  that  their  verdict  in  the  case  should  be  accepted  as 
S<>7 


MARK     TWAIN 

conclusive,  so  far  as  any  a  priori  theory  of  construction  or  control 
can  be  considered  conclusive? 

It  should  be  remembered  that  upon  this  board  are  General 
Gilmore,  General  Comstock,  and  General  Suter  of  the  United 
States  Engineers;  Professor  Henry  Mitchell  (the  most  compe- 
tent authority  on  the  question  of  hydrography)  of  the  United 
States  Coast  Survey;  B.  B.  Harrod,  the  State  Engineer  of 
Louisiana;  Jas.  B.  Eads,  vrhose  success  with  the  jetties  at  New 
Orleans  is  a  warrant  of  his  competency,  and  Judge  Taylor  of 
Indiana. 

.  It  would  be  presumption  on  the  part  of  any  single  man, 
however  skilled,  to  contest  the  judgment  of  such  a  board  as 
this. 

The  method  of  improvement  proposed  by  the  commission  is 
at  once  in  accord  with  the  results  of  engineering  experience  and 
with  observations  of  nature  where  meeting  our  wants.  As  in 
nature  the  growth  of  trees  and  their  proncness,  where  under- 
mined, to  fall  across  the  slope  and  support  the  bank  secure  at 
some  points  a  fair  depth  of  channel  and  some  degree  of  perma- 
nence; so,  in  the  project  of  the  engineer,  the  use  of  timber  and 
brush  and, the  encouragement  of  forest  growth  are  the  main 
features.  It  is  proposed  to  reduce  the  width,  where  excessive, 
by  brushwood  dykes,  at  first  low,  but  raised  higher  and  higher 
as  the  mud  of  the  river  settles  under  their  shelter,  and  finally 
slope  them  back  at  the  angle  upon  which  willows  will  grow 
freely.  In  this  work  there  are  many  details  connected  with  the 
forms  of  these  shelter  dykes,  their  arrangements  so  as  to  present 
a  series  of  settling  basins,  etc.,  a  description  of  which  would  only 
complicate  the  conception.  Through  the  larger  part  of  the 
river  works  of  contraction  will  not  be  required,  but  nearly  all 
the  banks  on  the  concave  side  of  the  bends  must  be  held  against 
the  wear  of  the  stream,  and  much  of  the  opposite  banks  defended 
at  critical  points.  The  works  having  in  view  this  conservative 
object  may  be  generally  designated  works  of  revetment;  and 
these  also  will  be  largely  of  brushwood,  woven  in  continuous 
carpets,  or  twined  into  wire  netting.  This  veneering  process  has 
been  successfully  employed  on  the  Missouri  River;  and  in  some 
cases  they  have  so  covered  themselves  with  sediments,  and  have 
become  so  overgrown  with  willows,  that  they  may  be  regarded 
as  permanent.  In  securing  these  mats  rubblestone  is  to  be 
used  in  small  quantities,  and  in  some  instances  the  dressed  slope 
508 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

between  high  and  low  river  will  have  to  be  more  or  less  paved 
with  stone. 

Any  one  who  has  been  on  the  Rhine  will  have  observed  opera- 
tions not  unlike  those  to  which  we  have  just  referred;  and, 
indeed,  most  of  the  rivers  of  Europe  flowing  among  their  own 
alluvia  have  required  similar  treatment  in  the  interest  of  navi- 
gation and  agriculture. 

The  levee  is  the  crowning  work  of  bank  revetment,  although 
not  necessarily  in  immediate  connection.  It  may  be  set  back 
a  short  distance  from  the  revetted  bank;  but  it  is,  in  effect,  the 
requisite  parapet.  The  flood  river  and  the  low  river  cannot  be 
brought  into  register,  and  compelled  to  unite  in  the  excavation 
of  a  single  permanent  channel,  without  a  complete  control  of  all 
the  stages;  and  even  the  abnormal  rise  must  be  provided  against, 
because  this  would  endanger  the  levee,  and  once  in  force  behind 
the  works  of  revetment,  would  tear  them  also  away. 

Under  the  general  principle  that  the  local  slope  of  a  river  is 
the  result  and  measure  of  the  resistance  of  its  bed,  it  is  evident 
that  a  narrow  and  deep  stream  should  have  less  slope,  because 
it  has  less  f fictional  surface  in  proportion  to  capacity;  i.  e.,  less 
perimeter  in  proportion  to  area  of  cross-section.  The  ultimate 
effect  of  levees  and  revetments,  confining  the  floods  and  bringing 
all  the  stages  of  the  river  into  registry,  is  to  deepen  the  channel 
and  let  down  the  slope.  The  first  effect  of  the  levees  is  to  raise 
the  surface;  but  this,  by  inducing  greater  velocity  of  flow,  in- 
evitably causes  an  enlargement  of  section,  and  if  this  enlarge- 
ment is  prevented  from  being  made  at  the  expense  of  banks, 
the  bottom  must  give  way  and  the  form  of  the  waterway  be  so 
improved  as  to  admit  this  flow  with  less  rise.  The  actual  experi- 
ence with  levees  upon  the  Mississippi  River,  with  no  attempt  to 
hold  the  banks,  has  been  favorable,  and  no  one  can  doubt,  upon 
the  evidence  furnished  in  the  reports  of  the  commission,  that  if 
the  earliest  levees  had  been  accompanied  by  revetment  of  banks, 
and  made  complete,  we  should  have  to-day  a  river  navigable  at 
low  water  and  an  adjacent  country  safe  from  inundation. 

Of  course  it  would  be  illogical  to  conclude  that  the  con- 
strained river  can  ever  lower  its  flood  slope  so  as  to  make  levees 
unnecessary,  but  it  is  believed  that,  by  this  lateral  constraint, 
the  river  as  a  conduit  may  be  so  improved  in  form  that  even 
those  rare  floods  which  result  from  the  coincident  rising  of  many 
tributaries  will  find  vent  without  destroying  levees  of  ordinary 
509 


MARK     TWAIN 

height.  That  the  actual  capacity  of  a  channel  through  alluvium 
depends  upon  its  service  during  floods  has  been  often  shown,  but 
this  capacity  does  not  include  anomalous,  but  recurrent,  floods. 

It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  consider  the  projects  for  relieving 
the  Mississippi  River  floods  by  creating  new  outlets,  since  these 
sensational  propositions  have  commended  themselves  only  to 
unthinking  minds,  and  have  no  support  among  engineers.  Were 
the  river-bed  cast-iron,  a  resort  to  openings  for  surplus  waters 
might  be  a  necessity;  but  as  the  bottom  is  yielding,  and  the  best 
form  of  outlet  is  a  single  deep  channel,  as  realizing  the  least 
ratio  of  perimeter  to  area  of  cross-section,  there  could  not  well 
be  a  more  unphilosophical  method  of  treatment  than  the  multi- 
plication of  avenues  of  escape. 

In  the  foregoing  statement  the  attempt  has  been  made  to 
condense  in  as  limited  a  space  as  the  importance  of  the  subject 
would  permit,  the  general  elements  of  the  problem,  and  the 
general  features  of  the  proposed  method  of  improvement  which 
has  been  adopted  by  the  Mississippi  River  Commission. 

The  writer  cannot  help  feeling  that  it  is  somewhat  presumptu- 
ous on  his  part  to  attempt  to  present  the  facts  relating  to  an 
enterprise  which  calls  for  the  highest  scientific  skill;  but  it  is  a 
matter  which  interests  every  citizen  of  the  United  States,  and 
is  one  of  the  methods  of  reconstruction  which  ought  to  be 
approved.  It  is  a  war  claim  which  implies  no  private  gain,  and 
no  compensation  except  for  one  of  the  cases  of  destruction 
incident  to  war  which  may  well  be  repaired  by  the  people  of  the 
whole  country. 

EDWAKJD  ATKINSON. 

BOSTON,  April  14,  i88a. 


RECEPTION  OF  CAPTAIN  BASIL  HALL'S  BOOK  IN  THE 
UNITED  STATES 

HAVING  now  arrived  nearly  at  the  end  of  our  travels,  I  am 
induced,  ere  I  conclude,  again  to  mention  what  I  consider  as 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  traits  in  the  national  character  of 
the  Americans :  namely,  their  exquisite  sensitiveness  and  soreness 
respecting  everything  said  or  written  concerning  them.  Of  this, 
perhaps,  the  most  remarkable  example  I  can  give  is  the  effect 
produced  on  nearly  every  class  of  readers  by  the  appearance  of 
Captain  Basil  Hall's  Travels  in  North  America.  In  fact,  it  was 
a  sort  of  moral  earthquake,  and  the  vibration  it  occasioned 
through  the  nerves  of  the  republic,  from  one  corner  of  the 
Union  to  the  other,  was  by  no  means  over  when  I  left  the  coun- 
try in  July,  1831,  a  couple  of  years  after  the  shock. 

I  was  in  Cincinnati  when  these  volumes  came  out,  but  it  was 
not  till  July,  1830,  that  I  procured  a  copy  of  them.  One  book- 
seller to  whom  I  applied  told  me  that  he  had  had  a  few  copies 
before  he  understood  the  nature  of  the  work,  but  that,  after 
becoming  acquainted  with  it,  nothing  should  induce  him  to  sell 
another.  Other  persons  of  his  profession  must,  however,  have 
been  less  scrupulous;  for  the  book  was  read  in  city,  town,  village, 
and  hamlet,  steamboat  and  stage-coach,  and  a  sort  of  war- 
whoop  was  sent  forth  perfectly  unprecedented  in  my  recollection 
upon  any  occasion  whatever. 

An  ardent  desire  for  approbation,  and  a  delicate  sensitiveness 
under  censure,  have  always,  I  believe,  been  considered  as 
amiable  traits  of  character,  but  the  condition  into  which  the 
appearance  of  Captain  Hall's  work  threw  the  republic  shows 
plainly  that  these  feelings,  if  carried  to  excess,  produce  a  weak- 
ness which  amounts  to  imbecility. 

It  was  perfectly  astonishing  to  hear  men  who,  on  other  sub- 


MARK    TWAIN 

jects,  were  of  some  judgment,  utter  their  opinions  upon  this. 
I  never  heard  of  any  instance  in  which  the  common  sense  gener- 
ally found  in  national  criticism  was  so  overthrown  by  passion. 
I  do  not  speak  of  the  want  of  justice,  and  of  fair  and  liberal 
interpretation:  these,  perhaps,  were  hardly  to  be  expected. 
Other  nations  have  been  called  thin-skinned,  but  the  citizens  of 
the  Union  have,  apparently,  no  skins  at  all;  they  wince  if  a 
breeze  blows  over  them,  unless  it  be  tempered  with  adulation. 
It  was  not,  therefore,  very  surprising  that  the  acute  and  forcible 
observations  of  a  traveler  they  knew  would  be  listened  to  should 
be  received  testily.  The  extraordinary  features  of  the  business 
were,  first,  the  excess  of  the  rage  into  which  they  lashed  them- 
selves; and,  secondly,  the  puerility  of  the  inventions  by  which 
they  attempted  to  account  for  the  severity  with  which  they 
fancied  they  had  been  treated. 

Not  content  with  declaring  that  the  volumes  contained  no 
word  of  truth  from  beginning  to  end  (which  is  an  assertion  I 
heard  made  very  nearly  as  often  as  they  were  mentioned),  the 
whole  country  set  to  work  to  discover  the  causes  why  Captain 
Hall  had  visited  the  United  States,  and  why  he  had  published 
his  book. 

I  have  heard  it  said  with  as  much  precision  and  gravity  as 
if  the  statement  had  been  conveyed  by  an  official  report,  that 
Captain  Hall  had  been  sent  out  by  the  British  government 
expressly  for  the  purpose  of  checking  the  growing  admiration 
of  England  for  the  government  of  the  United  States — that  it 
was  by  a  commission  from  the  Treasury  he  had  come,  and  that 
it  was  only  in  obedience  to  orders  that  he  had  found  anything 
to  object  to. 

I  do  not  give  this  as  the  gossip  of  a  coterie;  I  am  persuaded 
that  it  is  the  belief  of  a  very  considerable  portion  of  the  country. 
So  deep  is  the  conviction  of  this  singular  people  that  they  cannot 
be  seen  without  being  admired,  that  they  will  not  admit  the 
possibility  that  any  one  should  honestly  and  sincerely  find 
aught  to  disprove  in  them  or  their  country. 

The  American  Reviews  are,  many  of  them,  I  believe,  well 
known  in  England;  I  need  not,  therefore,  quote  them  here,  but 
I  sometimes  wondered  that  they,  none  of  them,  ever  thought 
of  translating  Obadiah's  curse  into  classic  American;  if  they  had 
done  so,  on  placing  [he,  Basil  Hall]  between  brackets,  instead 
of  [he,  Obadiah]  it  would  have  saved  them  a  world  of  trouble. 
512 


LIFE     ON    THE    MISSISSIPPI 

I  can  hardly  describe  the  curiosity  with  which  I  sat  down 
at  length  to  peruse  these  tremendous  volumes;  still  less  can  I 
do  justice  to  my  surprise  at  their  contents.  To  say  that  I  have 
found  not  one  exaggerated  statement  throughout  the  work  is 
by  no  means  saying  enough.  It  is  impossible  for  any  one  who 
loiows  the  country  not  to  see  that  Captain  Hall  earnestly  sought 
out  things  to  admire  and  commend.  When  he  praises,  it  is  with 
evident  pleasure;  and  when  he  finds  fault,  it  is  with  evident  re- 
luctance and  restraint,  excepting  where  motives  purely  patriotic 
urge  him  to  state  roundly  what  it  is  for  the  benefit  of  his  country 
should  be  known. 

In  fact,  Captain  Hall  saw  the  country  to  the  greatest  possible 
advantage.  Furnished,  of  course,  with  letters  of  introduction  to 
the  most  distinguished  individuals,  and  with  the  still  more  in- 
fluential recommendation  of  his  own  reputation,  he  was  received 
in  full  drawing-room  style  and  state  from  one  end  of  the  Union 
to  the  other.  He  saw  the  country  in  full  dress,  and  had  little 
or  no  opportunity  of  judging  of  it  unhouselled,  unanointed, 
unannealed,  with  all  its  imperfections  on  its  head,  as  I  and  my 
family  too  often  had. 

Captain  Hall  had  certainly  excellent  opportunities  of  making 
himself  acquainted  with  the  form  of  the  government  and  the 
laws ;  and  of  receiving,  moreover,  the  best  oral  commentary  upon 
them,  in  conversation  with  the  most  distinguished  citizens. 
Of  these  opportunities  he  made  excellent  use ;  nothing  important 
met  his  eye  which  did  not  receive  that  sort  of  analytical  atten- 
tion which  an  experienced  and  philosophical  traveler  alone  can 
give.  This  has  made  his  volumes  highly  interesting  and  valu- 
able; but  I  am  deeply  persuaded  that,  were  a  man  of  equal 
penetration  to  visit  the  United  States  with  no  other  means  of 
becoming  acquainted  with  the  national  character  than  the  ordi- 
nary working-day  intercourse  of  life,  he  would  conceive  an 
infinitely  lower  idea  of  the  moral  atmosphere  of  the  country 
than  Captain  Hall  appears  to  have  done;  and  the  internal  con- 
viction on  my  mind  is  strong  that,  if  Captain  Hall  had  not 
placed  a  firm  restraint  on  himself,  he  must  have  given  expression 
to  far  deeper  indignation  than  any  he  has  uttered  against  many 
points  in  the  American  character,  with  which  he  shows  from 
other  circumstances  that  he  was  well  acquainted.  His  rule 
appears  to  have  been  to  state  just  so  much  of  the  truth  as  would 
leave  on  the  mind  of  his  readers  a  correct  impression,  at  least  the 


MARK    TWAIN 

cost  of  pain  to  the  sensitive  folks  he  was  writing  about.  He 
states  his  own  opinions  and  feelings,  and  leaves  it  to  be  inferred 
that  he  has  good  ground  for  adopting  them;  but  he  spares  the 
Americans  the  bitterness  which  a  detail  of  the  circumstances 
would  have  produced. 

If  any  one  chooses  to  say  that  some  wicked  antipathy  to  twelve 
millions  of  strangers  is  the  origin  of  my  opinion,  I  must  bear 
it;  and  were  the  question  one  of  mere  idle  speculation,  I  cer- 
tainly would  not  court  the  abuse  I  must  meet  for  stating  it. 
But  it  is  not  so. 

The  candor  which  he  expresses,  and  evidently  feels,  they 
mistake  for  irony,  or  totally  distrust;  his  unwillingness  to  give 
pain  to  persons  from  whom  he  has  received  kindness,  they 
scornfully  reject  as  affectation;  and  although  they  must  know 
right  well,  in  their  own  secret  hearts,  how  infinitely  more  they 
lay  at  his  mercy  than  he  has  chosen  to  betray,  they  pretend, 
even  to  themselves,  that  he  has  exaggerated  the  bad  points  of 
their  character  and  institutions;  whereas,  the  truth  is  that  he 
has  let  them  off  with  a  degree  of  tenderness  which  may  be  quite 
suitable  for  him  to  exercise,  however  little  merited;  while,  at  the 
same  time,  he  has  most  industriously  magnified  their  merits, 
whenever  he  could  possibly  find  anything  favorable. 


THE  UNDYING  HEAD 

IN  a  remote  part  of  the  North  lived  a  man  and  his  sister,  who 
had  never  seen  a  human  being.  Seldom,  if  ever,  had  the  man 
any  cause  to  go  from  home;  for,  as  his  wants  demanded  food, 
he  had  only  to  go  a  little  distance  from  the  lodge,  and  there,  in 
some  particular  spot,  place  his  arrows,  with  their  barbs  in  the 
ground.  Telling  his  sister  where  they  had  been  placed,  every 
morning  she  would  go  in  search,  and  never  fail  of  finding  each 
stuck  through  the  heart  of  a  deer.  She  had  then  only  to  drag 
them  into  the  lodge  and  prepare  their  food.  Thus  she  lived 
till  she  attained  womanhood,  when  one  day  her  brother,  whose 
name  was  lamo,  said  to  her:  "Sister,  the  time  is  at  hand  when 
you  will  be  ill.  Listen  to  my  advice.  If  you  do  not,  it  will 
probably  be  the  cause  of  my  death.  Take  the  implements 
with  which  we  kindle  our  fires.  Go  some  distance  from  our 
lodge  and  build  a  separate  fire.  When  you  are  in  want  of  food, 
I  will  tell  you  where  to  find  it.  You  must  cook  for  yourself, 
and  I  will  for  myself.  When  you  are  ill,  do  not  attempt  to 
come  near  the  lodge,  or  bring  any  of  the  utensils  you  use.  Be 
sure  always  to  fasten  to  your  belt  the  implements  you  need, 
for  you  do  not  know  when  the  time  will  come.  As  for  myself, 
I  must  do  the  best  I  can."  His  sister  promised  to  obey  him  in 
all  he  had  said. 

Shortly  after,  her  brother  had  cause  to  go  from  home.  She 
was  alone  in  her  lodge  combing  her  hair.  She  had  just  untied 
the  belt  to  which  the  implements  were  fastened,  when  suddenly 
the  event  to  which  her  brother  had  alluded  occurred.  She  ran 
out  of  the  lodge,  but  in  her  haste  forgot  the  belt.  Afraid  to 
return,  she  stood  for  some  time  thinking.  Finally,  she  decided 
to  enter  the  lodge  and  get  it.  For,  thought  she,  my  brother  is 
not  at  home,  and  I  will  stay  but  a  moment  to  catch  hold  of  it. 
She  went  back.  Running  in  suddenly,  she  caught  hold  of  it, 
SIS 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  was  coining  out  when  her  brother  came  in  sight.  lie  knew 
what  was  the  matter.  "Oh,"  he  said,  "did  I  not  tell  you  to 
take  care?  But  now  you  have  killed  me."  She  was  going  on 
her  way,  but  her  brother  said  to  her,  "What  can  you  do  there 
now?  The  accident  has  happened.  Go  in,  and  stay  where 
you  have  always  stayed.  And  what  will  become  of  you?  You 
have  killed  me." 

He  then  laid  aside  his  hunting-dress  and  accoutrements,  and 
soon  after  both  his  feet  began  to  turn  black,  so  that  he  could 
not  move.  Still  he  directed  his  sister  where  to  place  the  arrows, 
that  she  might  always  have  food.  The  inflammation  continued 
to  increase,  and  had  now  reached  his  first  rib;  and  he  said,  "Sis- 
ter, my  end  is  near.  You  must  do  as  I  tell  you.  You  see  my 
medicine-sack,  and  my  war-club  tied  to  it.  It  contains  all  my 
medicines,  and  my  war-plumes,  and  my  paints  of  all  colors.  As 
soon  as  the  inflammation  reaches  my  breast,  you  will  take  my 
war-club.  It  has  a  sharp  point,  and  you  will  cut  off  my  head. 
When  it  is  free  from  my  body,  take  it,  place  its  neck  in  the  sack, 
which  you  must  open  at  one  end.  Then  hang  it  up  in  its  former 
place.  Do  not  forget  my  bow  and  arrows.  One  of  the  last 
you  will  take  to  procure  food.  The  remainder  tie  in  my  sack, 
and  then  hang  it  up,  so  that  I  can  look  toward  the  door.  Now 
and  then  I  will  speak  to  you,  but  not  often."  His  sister  again 
promised  to  obey. 

In  a  little  time  his  breast  was  affected.  "Now,"  said  he, 
"take  the  club  and  strike  off  my  head."  She  was  afraid,  but  he 
told  her  to  muster  courage.  "Strike!"  said  he,  and  a  smile  was 
on  his  face.  Mustering  all  her  courage,  she  gave  the  blow  and 
cut  off  the  head.  "Now,"  said  the  head,  "place  me  where  I 
told  you."  And  fearfully  she  obeyed  it  in  all  its  commands. 
Retaining  its  animation,  it  looked  around  the  lodge  as  usual,  and 
it  would  command  its  sister  to  go  in  such  places  as  it  thought 
would  procure  for  her  the  flesh  of  different  animals  she  needed. 
One  day  the  head  said:  "The  time  is  not  distant  when  I  shall  be 
freed  from  this  situation,  and  I  shall  have  to  undergo  many  sore 
evils.  So  the  superior  manito  decrees,  and  I  must  bear  all 
patiently."  In  this  situation  we  must  leave  the  head. 

In  a  certain  part  of  the  country  was  a  village  inhabited  by  a 
numerous  and  warlike  band  of  Indians.  In  this  village  was  a 
family  of  ten  young  men — brothers.  It  was  in  the  spring  of 
the  year  that  the  youngest  of  these  blackened  his  face  and 


LIFE     ON     THE     MISSISSIPPI 

fasted.  His  dreams  were  propitious.  Having  ended  his  fast, 
he  went  secretly  for  his  brothers  at  night,  so  that  none  in  the 
village  could  overhear  or  find  out  the  direction  they  intended 
to  go.  Though  their  drum  was  heard,  yet  that  was  a  common 
occurrence.  Having  ended  the  usual  formalities,  he  told  how 
favorable  his  dreams  were,  and  that  he  had  called  them  to- 
gether to  know  if  they  would  accompany  him  in  a  war  ex- 
cursion. They  all  answered  they  would.  The  third  brother 
from  the  eldest,  noted  for  his  oddities,  coming  up  with  his 
war-club  when  his  brother  had  ceased  speaking,  jumped  up. 
"Yes,"  said  he,  "I  will  go,  and  this  will  be  the  way  I  will  treat 
those  I  am  going  to  fight";  and  he  struck  the  post  in  the  center 
of  the  lodge,  and  gave  a  yell.  The  others  spoke  to  him  saying: 
"Slow,  slow,  Mudjikewis!  when  you  are  in  other  people's  lodges." 
So  he  sat  down.  Then,  in  turn,  they  took  the  drum,  and  sang 
their  songs,  and  closed  with  a  feast.  The  youngest  told  them 
not  to  whisper  their  intention  to  their  wives,  but  secretly  to 
prepare  for  their  journey.  They  all  promised  obedience,  and 
Mudjikewis  was  the  first  to  say  so. 

The  time  for  their  departure  drew  near.  Word  was  given  to 
assemble  on  a  certain  night,  when  they  would  depart  imme- 
diately. Mudjikewis  was  loud  in  his  demands  for  his  moccasins. 
Several  times  his  wife  asked  him  the  reason.  "Besides,"  said 
she,  "you  have  a  good  pair  on."  "Quick,  quick!"  said  he, 
"since  you  must  know,  we  are  going  on  a  war  excursion;  so 
be  quick."  He  thus  revealed  the  secret.  That  night  they  met 
and  started.  The  snow  was  on  the  ground,  and  they  traveled 
all  night,  lest  others  should  follow  them.  When  it  was  daylight, 
the  leader  took  snow  and  made  a  ball  of  it,  then  tossing  it  into 
the  air,  he  said:  "It  was  in  this  way  I  saw  snow  fall  in  a  dream, 
so  that  I  could  not  be  tracked."  And  he  told  them  to  keep 
close  to  each  other  for  fear  of  losing  themselves,  as  the  snow 
began  to  fall  in  very  large  flakes.  Near  as  they  walked,  it  was 
with  difficulty  they  could  see  each  other.  The  snow  continued 
falling  all  that  day  and  the  following  night,  so  it  was  impossible 
to  track  them. 

They  had  now  walked  for  several  days,  and  Mudjikewis  was 
always  in  the  rear.  One  day,  running  suddenly  forward,  he 
gave  the  saw-saw-quan,1  and  struck  a  tree  with  his  war-club, 

1  War- whoop. 
517 


MARK    TWAIN 

and  it  broke  into  pieces  as  if  struck  with  lightning.  "Brothers," 
said  he,  "this  will  be  the  way  I  will  serve  those  we  are  going 
to  fight."  The  leader  answered,  "Slow,  slow,  Mudjikewis! 
The  one  I  lead  you  to  is  not  to  be  thought  of  so  lightly."  Again 
he  fell  back  and  thought  to  himself:  "What!  what!  Who  can 
this  be  he  is  leading  us  to?"  He  felt  fearful,  and  was  silent. 
Day  after  day  they  traveled  on,  till  they  came  to  an  extensive 
plain,  on  the  borders  of  which  human  bones  were  bleaching  in 
the  sun.  The  leader  spoke:  "They  are  the  bones  of  those  who 
have  gone  before  us.  None  has  ever  yet  returned  to  tell  the 
sad  tale  of  their  fate."  Again  Mudjikewis  became  restless,  and, 
running  forward,  gave  the  accustomed  yell.  Advancing  to  a 
large  rock  which  stood  above  the  ground,  he  struck  it,  and  it 
fell  to  pieces.  "See,  brothers,"  said  he,  "thus  will  I  treat  those 
whom  we  are  going  to  fight."  "Still,  still!"  once  more  said  the 
leader.  "He  to  whom  I  am  leading  you  is  not  to  be  compared 
to  the  rock." 

Mudjikewis  fell  back  thoughtful,  saying  to  himself:  "I  won- 
der who  this  can  be  that  he  is  going  to  attack";  and  he  was 
afraid.  Still  they  continued  to  see  the  remains  of  former  war- 
riors, who  had  been  to  the  place  where  they  were  now  going,  some 
of  whom  had  retreated  as  far  back  as  the  place  where  they  first 
saw  the  bones,  beyond  which  no  one  had  ever  escaped.  At  last 
they  came  to  a  piece  of  rising  ground,  from  which  they  plainly 
distinguished,  sleeping  on  a  distant  mountain,  a  mammoth 
bear. 

The  distance  between  them  was  very  great,  but  the  size  of 
the  animal  caused  him  to  be  plainly  seen.  "There!"  said  the 
leader,  "it  is  he  to  whom  I  am  leading  you;  here  our  troubles 
will  commence,  for  he  is  a  mishemokwa  and  a  manito.  It  is 
he  who  has  that  we  prize  so  dearly  (i.  e.,  wampum),  to  obtain 
which  the  warriors  whose  bones  we  saw  sacrificed  their  lives. 
You  must  not  be  fearful;  be  manly.  We  shall  find  him  asleep." 
Then  the  leader  went  forward  and  touched  the  belt  around  the 
animal's  neck.  "This,"  said  he,  "is  what  we  must  get.  It 
contains  the  wampum."  Then  they  requested  the  eldest  to  try 
and  slip  the  belt  over  the  bear's  head,  who  appeared  to  be  fast 
asleep,  as  he  was  not  in  the  least  disturbed  by  the  attempt  to 
obtain  the  belt.  All  their  efforts  were  in  vain,  till  it  came  to 
the  one  next  the  youngest.  He  tried,  and  the  belt  moved  nearly 
over  the  monster's  head,  but  he  could  get  it  no  farther.  Then 


LIFE    ON     THE    MISSISSIPPI 

the  youngest  one,  and  the  leader,  made  his  attempt,  and  suc- 
ceeded. Placing  it  on  the  back  of  the  oldest,  he  said,  "  Now  we 
must  run,"  and  off  they  started.  When  one  became  fatigued 
with  its  weight,  another  would  relieve  him.  Thus  they  ran 
till  they  had  passed  the  bones  of  all  former  warriors,  and  were 
some  distance  beyond,  when,  looking  back,  they  saw  the  monster 
slowly  rising.  He  stood  some  time  before  he  missed  his  wam- 
pum. Soon  they  heard  his  tremendous  howl,  like  distant 
thunder,  slowly  filling  all  the  sky;  and  then  they  heard  him 
speak  and  say,  "Who  can  it  be  that  has  dared  to  steal  my 
wampum?  Earth  is  not  so  large  but  that  I  can  find  them"; 
and  he  descended  from  the  hill  in  pursuit.  As  if  convulsed,  the 
earth  shook,  with  every  jump  he  made.  Very  soon  he  ap- 
proached the  party.  They,  however,  kept  the  belt,  exchanging 
it  from  one  to  another,  and  encouraging  each  other;  but  he 
gained  on  them  fast.  "Brothers,"  said  the  leader,  "has  never 
any  one  of  you,  when  fasting,  dreamed  of  some  friendly  spirit 
who  would  aid  you  as  a  guardian?"  A  dead  silence  followed. 
"Well,"  said  he,  "fasting,  I  dreamed  of  being  in  danger  of 
instant  death,  when  I  saw  a  small  lodge,  with  smoke  curling 
from  its  top.  An  old  man  lived  in  it,  and  I  dreamed  he  helped 
me;  and  may  it  be  verified  soon,"  he  said,  running  forward  and 
giving  the  peculiar  yell,  and  a  howl  as  if  the  sounds  came  from 
the  depth  of  his  stomach,  and  what  is  called  checaudum.  Getting 
upon  a  piece  of  rising  ground,  behold!  a  lodge,  with  smoke 
curling  from  its  top,  appeared.  This  gave  them  all  new  strength, 
and  they  ran  forward  and  entered  it.  The  leader  spoke  to  the 
old  man  who  sat  in  the  lodge,  saying,  "Nemesho,  help  us;  we 
claim  your  protection,  for  the  great  bear  will  kill  us."  "Sit 
down  and  eat,  my  grandchildren,"  said  the  old  man.  "Who  is 
a  great  manito?"  said  he.  "There  is  none  but  me;  but  let  me 
look,"  and  he  opened  the  door  of  the  lodge,  when  Ipl  at  a  little 
distance  he  saw  the  enraged  animal  coming  on,  with  slow  but 
powerful  leaps.  He  closed  the  door.  "Yes,"  said  he,  "he  is 
indeed  a  great  manito.  My  grandchildren,  you  will  be  the 
cause  of  my  losing  my  life;  you  asked  my  protection,  and  I 
granted  it;  so  now,  come  what  may,  I  will  protect  you.  When 
the  bear  arrives  at  the  door,  you  must  run  out  of  the  other  door 
of  the  lodge."  Then  putting  his  hand  to  the  side  of  the  lodge 
where  he  sat,  he  brought  out  a  bag  which  he  opened.  Taking 
,  out  two  small  black  dogs,  he  placed  them  before  him.  "These 
519 


MARK     TWAIN 

:(jre  the  ones  I  use  when  I  fight,"  said  he;  and  he  commenced 
patting  with  both  hands  the  sides  of  one  of  them,  and  he  began 
to  swell  out,  so  that  he  soon  filled  the  lodge  by  his  bulk;  and  he 
had  great  strong  teeth.  When  he  attained  his  full  size  he 
growled,  and  from  that  moment,  as  from  instinct,  he  jumped 
out  at  the  door  and  met  the  bear,  who  in  another  leap  would 
have  reached  the  lodge.  A  terrible  combat  ensued.  The  skies 
rang  with  the  howls  of  the  fierce  monsters.  The  remaining  dog 
soon  took  the  field.  The  brothers,  at  the  onset,  took  the  advice 
of  the  old  man,  and  escaped  through  the  opposite  side  of  the 
lodge.  They  had  not  proceeded  far  before  they  heard  the  dying 
cry  of  one  of  the  dogs,  and,  soon  after,  of  the  other.  "Well," 
said  the  leader,  "the  old  man  will  share  their  fate;  so  run;  he 
will  soon  be  after  us."  They  started  with  fresh  vigor,  for  they 
had  received  food  from  the  old  man;  but  very  soon  the  bear 
came  in  sight,  and  again  was  fast  gaining  upon  them.  Again 
the  leader  asked  the  brothers  if  they  could  do  nothing  for  their 
safety.  All  were  silent.  The  leader,  running  forward,  did  as 
before.  "I  dreamed,"  he  cried,  "that,  being  in  great  trouble, 
an  old  man  helped  me  who  was  a  manito;  we  shall  soon  see  his 
lodge."  Taking  courage,  they  still  went  on.  After  going  a 
short  distance  they  saw  the  lodge  of  the  old  manito.  They 
entered  immediately  and  claimed  his  protection,  telling  him  a 
manito  was  after  them.  The  old  man,  setting  meat  before 
them,  said:  "Eat!  Who  is  a  manito?  There  is  no  manito  but 
me;  there  is  none  whom  I  fear";  and  the  earth  trembled  as  the 
monster  advanced.  The  old  man  opened  the  door  and  saw 
him  coming.  He  shut  it  slowly,  and  said:  "Yes,  my  grand- 
children, you  have  brought  trouble  upon  me."  Procuring  his 
medicine-sack,  he  took  out  his  small  war-clubs  of  black  stone, 
and  told  the  young  men  to  run  through  the  other  side  of  the 
lodge.  As  he  handled  the  clubs,  they  became  very  large,  and 
the  old  man  stepped  out  just  as  the  bear  reached  the  door. 
Then  striking  him  with  one  of  the  clubs,  it  broke  in  pieces;  the 
bear  stumbled.  Renewing  the  attempt  with  the  other  war-club, 
that  also  was  broken,  but  the  bear  fell  senseless.  Each  blow  the 
old  man  gave  him  sounded  like  a  clap  of  thunder,  and  the  howls 
of  the  bear  ran  along  till  they  filled  the  heavens. 

The  young  men  had  now  run  some  distance,  when  they  looked 
back.    They  could  see  that  the  bear  was  recovering  from  the 
blows.    First  he  moved  his  paws,  and  soon  they  saw  him  rise 
520 


LIFE     ON    THE    MISSISSIPPI 

on  his  feet.  The  old  man  shared  the  fate  of  the  first,  for  they 
now  heard  his  cries  as  he  was  torn  in  pieces.  Again  the  monster 
was  in  pursuit,  and  fast  overtaking  them.  Not  yet  discouraged, 
the  young  men  kept  on  their  way;  but  the  bear  was  now  so  close 
that  the  leader  once  more  applied  to  his  brothers,  but  they 
could  do  nothing.  "Well,"  said  he,  "my  dreams  will  soon  be 
exhausted;  after  this  I  have  but  one  more."  He  advanced, 
invoking  his  guardian  spirit  to  aid  him.  "Once,"  said  he,  "I 
dreamed  that,  being  sorely  pressed,  I  came  to  a  large  lake,  on 
the  shore  of  which  was  a  canoe,  partly  out  of  water,  having  ten 
paddles  all  in  readiness.  Do  not  fear,"  he  cried,  "we  shall  soon 
get  it."  And  so  it  was,  even  as  he  had  said.  Coming  to  the 
lake,  they  saw  the  canoe  with  ten  paddles,  and  immediately 
they  embarked.  Scarcely  had  they  reached  the  center  of  the 
lake,  when  they  saw  the  bear  arrive  at  its  borders.  Lifting 
himself  on  his  hind  legs,  he  looked  all  around.  Then  he  waded 
into  the  water;  then,  losing  his  footing,  he  turned  back,  and 
commenced  making  the  circuit  of  the  lake.  Meantime  the 
party  remained  stationary  in  the  center  to  watch  his  movements. 
He  traveled  all  around,  till  at  last  he  came  to  the  place  from 
whence  he  started.  Then  he  commenced  drinking  up  the 
water,  and  they  saw  the  current  fast  setting  in  toward  his  open 
mouth.  The  leader  encouraged  them  to  paddle  hard  for  the 
opposite  shore.  When  only  a  short  distance  from  the  land,  the 
current  had  increased  so  much  that  they  were  drawn  back  by 
it,  and  all  their  efforts  to  reach  it  were  in  vain. 

Then  the  leader  again  spoke,  telling  them  to  meet  their  fates 
manfully.  "Now  is  the  time,  Mudjikewis,"  said  he,  "to  show 
your  prowess.  Take  courage  and  sit  at  the  bow  of  the  canoe; 
and  when  it  approaches  his  mouth,  try  what  effect  your  club 
will  have  on  his  head."  He  obeyed,  and  stood  ready  to  give 
the  blow;  while  the  leader,  who  steered,  directed  the  canoe  for 
the  open  mouth  of  the  monster. 

Rapidly  advancing,  they  were  just  about  to  enter  his  mouth, 
when  Mudjikewis  struck  him  a  tremendous  blow  on  the  head, 
and  gave  the  saw-saw-quan.  The  bear's  limbs  doubled  under 
him,  and  he  fell,  stunned  by  the  blow.  But  before  Mudjikewis 
could  renew  it,  the  monster  disgorged  all  the  water  he  had 
drank,  with  a  force  which  sent  the  canoe  with  great  velocity 
to  the  opposite  shore.  Instantly  leaving  the  canoe,  again  they 
fled,  and  on  they  went  till  they  were  completely  exhausted. 


MARK    TWAIN 

The  earth  again  shook,  and  soon  they  saw  the  monster  hard 
after  them.  Their  spirits  drooped,  and  they  felt  discouraged. 
The  leader  exerted  himself,  by  actions  and  words,  to  cheer  them 
up;  and  once  more  he  asked  them  if  they  thought  of  nothing, 
or  could  do  nothing  for  their  rescue;  and,  as  before,  all  were 
silent.  "Then,"  he  said,  "this  is  the  last  time  I  can  apply 
to  my  guardian  spirit.  Now,  if  we  do  not  succeed,  our  fates  are 
decided."  He  ran  forward,  invoking  his  spirit  with  great  earnest- 
ness, and  gave  the  yell.  "We  shall  soon  arrive,"  said  he  to 
his  brothers,  "at  the  place  where  my  last  guardian  spirit  dwells. 
In  him  I  place  great  confidence.  Do  not,  do  not  be  afraid,  or 
your  limbs  will  be  fear-bound.  We  shall  soon  reach  his  lodge. 
Run,  run!"  he  cried. 

Returning  now  to  lamo,  he  had  passed  all  the  time  in  the 
same  condition  we  had  left  him,  the  head  directing  his  sister,  in 
order  to  procure  food,  where  to  place  the  magic  arrows,  and 
speaking  at  long  intervals.  One  day  the  sister  saw  the  eyes  of 
the  head  brighten,  as  if  with  pleasure.  At  last  it  spoke:  "Oh, 
sister,"  it  said,  "in  what  a  pitiful  situation  you  have  been  the 
cause  of  placing  me!  Soon,  very  soon,  a  party  of  young  men 
will  arrive  and  apply  to  me  for  aid;  but  alas!  How  can  I  give 
•what  I  would  have  done  with  so  much  pleasure?  Nevertheless, 
take  two  arrows  and  place  them  where  you  have  been  in  the 
habit  of  placing  the  others,  and  have  meat  prepared  and  cooked 
before  they  arrive.  When  you  hear  them  coming  and  calling 
on  my  name,  go  out  and  say,  'Alas!  it  is  long  ago  that  an  acci- 
dent befell  him.  I  was  the  cause  of  it.'  If  they  still  come 
near,  ask  them  in,  and  set  meat  before  them.  And  now  you 
must  follow  my  directions  strictly.  When  the  bear  is  near, 
go  out  and  meet  him.  You  will  take  my  medicine-sack,  bow 
and  arrows,  and  my  head.  You  must  then  untie  the  sack,  and 
spread  out  before  you  my  paints  of  all  colors,  my  war-eagle 
feathers,  my  tufts  of  dried  hair,  and  whatever  else  it  contains. 
As  the  bear  approaches,  you  will  take  all  these  articles,  one  by 
one,  and  say  to  him,  'This  is  my  deceased  brother's  paint,'  and 
so  on  with  all  the  other  articles,  throwing  each  of  them  as  far 
as  you  can.  The  virtues  contained  in  them  will  cause  him  to 
totter;  and,  to  complete  his  destruction,  you  will  take  my  head, 
and  that  too  you  will  cast  as  far  off  as  you  can,  crying  aloud, 
'See,  this  is  my  deceased  brother's  head!'  He  will  then  fall 
senseless.  By  this  time  the  young  men  will  have  eaten,  and  you 
522 


LIFE    ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

will  call  them  to  your  assistance.  You  must  then  cut  the 
carcass  into  pieces — yes,  into  small  pieces — and  scatter  them  to 
the  four  winds;  for,  unless  you  do  this,  he  will  again  revive." 
She  promised  that  all  should  be  done  as  he  said.  She  had  only 
time  to  prepare  the  meat,  when  the  voice  of  the  leader  was 
heard  calling  upon  lamo  for  aid.  The  woman  went  out,  and 
said  as  her  brother  had  directed.  But  the  war-party,  being 
closely  pursued,  came  up  to  the  lodge.  She  invited  them  in, 
and  placed  the  meat  before  them.  While  they  were  eating, 
they  heard  the  bear  approaching.  Untying  the  medicine-sack 
and  taking  the  head,  she  had  all  in  readiness  for  his  approach. 
When  he  came  up  she  did  as  she  had  been  told;  and  before  she 
had  expended  the  paints  and  feathers,  the  bear  began  to  totter, 
but,  still  advancing,  came  close  to  the  woman.  Saying  as  she 
was  commanded,  she  then  took  the  head,  and  cast  it  as  far  from 
her  as  she  could.  As  it  rolled  along  the  ground,  the  blood, 
excited  by  the  feelings  of  the  head  in  this  terrible  scene,  gushed 
from  the  nose  and  mouth.  The  bear,  tottering,  soon  fell  with 
a  tremendous  noise.  Then  she  cried  for  help,  and  the  young 
men  came  rushing  out,  having  partially  regained  their  strength 
and  spirits. 

Mudjikewis,  stepping  up,  gave  a  yell  and  struck  him  a  blow 
upon  the  head.  This  he  repeated,  till  it  seemed  like  a  mass  of 
brains,  while  the  others,  as  quick  as  possible,  cut  him  into  very 
small  pieces,  which  they  then  scattered  in  every  direction. 
While  thus  employed,  happening  to  look  around  where  they  had 
thrown  the  meat,  wonderful  to  behold,  they  saw  starting  up  and 
running  off  in  every  direction  small  black  bears,  such  as  are  seen 
at  the  present  day.  The  country  was  soon  overspread  with 
these  black  animals.  And  it  was  from  this  monster  that  the 
present  race  of  bears  derived  their  origin. 

Having  thus  overcome  their  pursuer,  they  returned  to  the 
lodge.  In  the  mean  time,  the  woman,  gathering  the  implements 
she  had  used,  and  the  head,  placed  them  again  in  the  sack.  But 
the  head  did  not  speak  again,  probably  from  its  great  exertion 
to  overcome  the  monster. 

Having  spent  so  much  time  and  traversed  so  vast  a  country 
in  their  flight,  the  young  men  gave  up  the  idea  of  ever  returning 
to  their  own  country,  and  game  being  plenty,  they  determined  to 
remain  where  they  now  were.  One  day  they  moved  off  some 
distance  from  the  lodge  for  the  purpose  of  hunting,  having  left 
533 


MARK    TWAIN 

the  wampum  with  the  woman.  They  were  very  successful,  and 
amused  themselves,  as  all  young  men  do  when  alone,  by  talking 
and  jesting  with  each  other.  One  of  them  spoke  and  said, 
"We  having  all  this  sport  to  ourselves;  let  us  go  and  ask  our 
sister  if  she  will  not  let  us  bring  the  head  to  this  place,  as  it 
is  still  alive.  It  may  be  pleased  to  hear  us  talk,  and  be  in 
our  company.  In  the  mean  time  take  food  to  our  sister." 
They  went  and  requested  the  head.  She  told  them  to  take  it, 
and  they  took  it  to  their  hunting-grounds,  and  tried  to  amuse 
it,  but  only  at  times  did  they  see  its  eyes  beam  with  pleasure. 
One  day,  while  busy  in  their  encampment,  they  were  unex- 
pectedly attacked  by  unknown  Indians.  The  skirmish  was  long- 
contested  and  bloody;  many  of  their  foes  were  slain,  but  still 
they  were  thirty  to  one.  The  young  men  fought  desperately 
till  they  were  all  killed.  The  attacking  party  then  retreated  to 
a  height  of  ground,  to  muster  their  men,  and  to  count  the  number 
of  missing  and  slain.  One  of  their  young  men  had  stayed  away, 
and,  in  endeavoring  to  overtake  them,  came  to  the  place  where 
the  head  was  hung  up.  Seeing  that  alone  retain  animation,  he 
eyed  it  for  some  time  with  fear  and  surprise.  However,  he  took 
it  down  and  opened  the  sack,  and  was  much  pleased  to  see  the 
beautiful  feathers,  one  of  which  he  placed  on  his  head. 

Starting  off,  it  waved  gracefully  over  him  till  he  reached  his 
party,  when  he  threw  down  the  head  and  sack,  and  told  them 
how  he  had  found  it,  and  that  the  sack  was  full  of  paints  and 
feathers.  They  all  looked  at  the  head  and  made  sport  of  it. 
Numbers  of  the  young  men  took  the  paint  and  painted  them- 
selves, and  one  of  the  party  took  the  head  by  the  hair  and 
said: 

"Look,  you  ugly  thing,  and  see  your  paints  on  the  faces  of 
warriors." 

But  the  feathers  were  so  beautiful  that  numbers  of  them  also 
placed  them  on  their  heads.  Then  again  they  used  all  kinds  of 
indignity  to  the  head,  for  which  they  were  in  turn  repaid  by  the 
death  of  those  who  had  used  the  feathers.  Then  the  chief  com- 
manded them  to  throw  away  all  except  the  head.  "We  will 
see,"  said  he,  "when  we  get  home  what  we  can  do  with  it.  We 
will  try  to  make  it  shut  its  eyes." 

When  they  reached  their  homes  they  took  it  to  the  council 
lodge  and  hung  it  up  before  the  fire,  fastening  it  with  rawhide 
soaked,  which  would  shrink  and  become  tightened  by  the  action 
524 


LIFE     ON    THE     MISSISSIPPI 

of  the  fire.  "We  will  then  see,"  they  said,  "if  we  cannot  make 
it  shut  its  eyes." 

Meantime,  for  several  days,  the  sister  had  been  waiting  for 
the  young  men  to  bring  back  the  head;  till  at  last,  getting  im- 
patient, she  went  in  search  of  it.  The  young  men  she  found 
lying  within  short  distances  of  each  other,  dead,  and  covered 
with  wounds.  Various  other  bodies  lay  scattered  in  different 
directions  around  them.  She  searched  for  the  head  and  sack, 
but  they  were  nowhere  to  be  found.  She  raised  her  voice  and 
wept,  and  blackened  her  face.  Then  she  walked  in  different 
directions,  till  she  came  to  the  place  from  whence  the  head  had 
been  taken.  Then  she  found  the  magic  bow  and  arrows,  where 
the  young  men,  ignorant  of  their  qualities,  had  left  v.hem.  She 
thought  to  herself  that  she  would  find  her  brother's  head,  and 
came  to  a  piece  of  rising  ground,  and  there  saw  some  of  his 
paints  and  feathers.  These  she  carefully  put  up,  and  hung  upon 
the  branch  of  a  tree  till  her  return. 

At  dusk  she  arrived  at  the  first  lodge  of  a  very  extensive 
village.  Here  she  used  a  charm,  common  among  Indians  when 
they  wish  to  meet  with  a  kind  reception.  On  applying  to  the 
old  man  and  woman  of  the  lodge,  she  was  kindly  received.  She 
made  known  her  errand.  The  old  man  promised  to  aid  her,  and 
told  her  the  head  was  hung  up  before  the  council  fire,  and  that 
the  chisfs  of  the  village,  with  their  young  men,  kept  watch  over 
it  continually.  The  former  are  considered  as  manitoes.  She 
said  she  only  wished  to  see  it,  and  would  be  satisfied  if  she  could 
only  get  to  the  door  of  the  lodge.  She  knew  she  had  not  suffi- 
cient power  to  take  it  by  force.  "Come  with  me,"  said  the 
Indian,  "I  will  take  you  there."  They  went,  and  they  took 
their  seats  near  the  door.  The  council  lodge  was  filled  with 
warriors,  amusing  themselves  with  games,  and  constantly  keep- 
ing up  a  fire  to  smoke  the  head,  as  they  said,  to  make  dry  meat. 
They  saw  the  head  move,  and  not  knowing  what  to  make  of 
it,  one  spoke  and  said:  "Ha!  ha!  It  is  beginning  to  feel  the 
effects  of  the  smoke."  The  sister  looked  up  from  the  door,  and 
her  eyes  met  those  of  her  brother,  and  tears  rolled  down  the 
cheeks  of  the  head.  "Well,"  said  the  chief,  "I  thought  we 
would  make  you  do  something  at  last.  Look!  look  at  it — 
shedding  tears!"  said  he  to  those  around  him;  and  they  all 
laughed  and  passed  their  jokes  upon  it.  The  chief,  looking 
around  and  observing  the  woman,  after  some  time  said  to  the 
5*5 


MARK    TWAIN 

man  who  came  with  her:  "Who  have  you  got  there?  I  have 
never  seen  that  woman  before  in  our  village."  "Yes,"  replied 
the  man,  "you  have  seen  her;  she  is  a  relation  of  mine,  and 
seldom  goes  out.  She  stays  at  my  lodge,  and  asked  me  to  allow 
her  to  come  with  me  to  this  place."  In  the  center  of  the  lodge 
sat  one  of  those  young  men  who  are  always  forward  and  fond 
of  boasting  and  displaying  themselves  before  others.  "Why," 
said  he,  "I've  seen  her  often,  and  it  is  to  this  lodge  I  go,  almost 
every  night,  to  court  her."  All  the  others  laughed,  and  con- 
tinued their  games.  The  young  man  did  not  know  he  was  telling 
a  He  to  the  woman's  advantage,  who  by  that  means  escaped. 

She  returned  to  the  man's  lodge,  and  immediately  set  out  for 
her  own  country.  Coming  to  the  spot  where  the  bodies  of  her 
adopted  brothers  lay,  she  placed  them  together,  their  feet 
toward  the  east.  Then,  taking  an  ax  which  she  had,  she  cast 
it  up  into  the  air,  crying  out,  "Brothers,  get  up  from  under 
it,  or  it  will  fall  on  you!"  This  she  repeated  three  times,  and 
the  third  time  the  brothers  all  arose  and  stood  on  their  feet. 

Mudjikewis  commenced  rubbing  his  eyes  and  stretching  him- 
self. "Why,"  said  he,  "I  have  overslept  myself."  "No, 
indeed,"  said  one  of  the  others;  "do  you  not  know  we  were  all 
killed,  and  that  it  is  our  sister  who  has  brought  us  to  life?" 
The  young  men  took  the  bodies  of  their  enemies  and  burned 
them.  Soon  after,  the  woman  went  to  procure  wives  for  them 
in  a  distant  country,  they  knew  not  where;  but  she  returned 
with  ten  young  women,  whom  she  gave  to  the  ten  young  men, 
beginning  with  the  eldest.  Mudjikewis  stepped  to  and  fro, 
uneasy  lest  he  should  not  get  the  one  he  liked.  But  he  was  not 
disappointed,  for  she  fell  to  his  lot.  And  they  were  well  matched, 
for  she  was  a  female  magician.  They  then  all  moved  into  a 
very  large  lodge,  and  their  sister  told  them  that  the  women 
must  now  take  turns  in  going  to  her  brother's  head  every  night, 
trying  to  untie  it.  They  all  said  they  would  do  so  with  pleasure. 
The  eldest  made  the  first  attempt,  and  with  a  rushing  noise  she 
fled  through  the  air. 

Toward  daylight  she  returned.  She  had  been  unsuccessful, 
as  she  succeeded  in  untying  only  one  of  the  knots.  All  took 
their  turns  regularly,  and  each  one  succeeded  in  untying  only 
one  knot  each  time.  But  when  the  youngest  went,  she  com- 
menced the  work  as  soon  as  she  reached  the  lodge;  although 
it  had  always  been  occupied,  still  the  Indians  never  could  see 
526 


LIFE    ON    THE    MISSISSIPPI 

any  one.  For  ten  nights  now  the  smoke  had  not  ascended,  but 
filled  the  lodge  and  drove  them  out.  This  last  night  they  were 
all  driven  out,  and  the  young  woman  carried  off  the  head. 

The  young  people  and  the  sister  heard  the  young  woman 
coming  high  through  the  air,  and  they  heard  her  saying:  "Pre- 
pare the  body  of  our  brother."  And  as  soon  as  they  heard  it, 
they  went  to  a  small  lodge  where  the  black  body  of  lamo  lay. 
His  sister  commenced  cutting  the  neck  part,  from  which  the 
neck  had  been  severed.  She  cut  so  deep  as  to  cause  it  to  bleed; 
and  the  others  who  were  present,  by  rubbing  the  body  and 
applying  medicines,  expelled  the  blackness.  In  the  mean  time, 
the  one  who  brought  it,  by  cutting  the  neck  of  the  head,  caused 
that  also  to  bleed. 

As  soon  as  she  arrived,  they  placed  that  close  to  the  body, 
and,  by  aid  of  medicines  and  various  other  means,  succeeded 
in  restoring  lamo  to  all  his  former  beauty  and  manliness.  All 
rejoiced  in  the  happy  termination  of  their  troubles,  and  they  had 
spent  some  time  joyfully  together,  when  lamo  said:  "Now  I 
will  divide  the  wampum";  and  getting  the  belt  which  contained 
it,  he  commenced  with  the  eldest,  giving  it  in  equal  portions. 
But  the  youngest  got  the  most  splendid  and  beautiful,  as  the 
bottom  of  the  belt  held  the  richest  and  rarest. 

They  were  told  that,  since  they  had  all  once  died,  and  were 
restored  to  life,  they  were  no  longer  mortal,  but  spirits,  and 
they  were  assigned  different  stations  in  the  invisible  world. 
Only  Mudjikewis's  place  was,  however,  named.  He  was  to 
direct  the  west  wind,  hence  generally  called  Kebeyun,  there  to 
remain  forever.  They  were  commanded,  as  they  had  it  in  their 
power,  to  do  good  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  earth,  and,  for- 
getting their  sufferings  in  procuring  the  wampum,  to  give  all 
things  with  a  liberal  hand.  And  they  were  also  commanded  that 
it  should  also  be  held  by  them  sacred;  those  grains  or  shells  of 
the  pale  hue  to  be  emblematic  of  peace,  while  those  of  the  darker 
hue  would  lead  to  evil  and  war. 

The  spirits  then,  amid  songs  and  shouts,  took  their  flight  to 
their  respective  abodes  on  high;  while  lamo  with  his  sister 
lamoqua,  descended  into  the  depths  below. 


THE    END 


6971 


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01    APR  191993; 

"HY 


3  1158  00661  9257 


